The world’s biggest developer of offshore wind farms is weighing nearly US$13 billion of projects in Taiwan, saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has not shifted its optimism about the region.
The potential investments by Orsted A/S would include the Greater Changhua 3 wind farm, which it plans to bid for in the next round of auctions if the conditions are “manageable,” Orsted president for Asia-Pacific Matthias Bausenwein said in a telephone interview.
The auction is scheduled for the end of this year, and the company would wait to see the framework and rules for the contest before deciding whether to participate.
Orsted has already built and commissioned Formosa 1 (海洋風電), the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in Taiwan, with joint venture partners. It is also building the Greater Changhua 1 and 2a wind farms, which are estimated to be completed next year or in 2022. Another plan is to build the Greater Changhua 2b and 4 wind farms in 2025.
Total capital expenditure for all four projects, with a capacity of 2.4 gigawatts, is estimated at up to NT$380 billion (US$12.5 billion).
“At the moment, we don’t see the coronavirus changing any of our plan,” Bausenwein said. “Business is as usual. We aim to be a long-term player in Taiwan.”
Orsted on Wednesday said that it is sticking to its guidance for this year, despite the coronavirus, and that its liquidity position is strong.
Funding for the investment would be from Orsted’s own capital and financing from Taiwan’s local financial institutions, as well as bond market, backed by an Orsted parent company guarantee.
The company has issued its first batch of NT$12 billion green bonds in Taiwan, and it might go ahead with another.
In addition to Taiwan, Japan is the next big step for Orsted in the Asia-Pacific region. The company has formed a joint venture with Tokyo Electric Power Co to prepare a bid for an auction at the end of this year.
Taiwan and Japan are both mountainous and rely heavily on fossil fuel imports, with highly populated coastal areas that make offshore wind an ideal renewable energy source.
Taiwan aims to be a leading developer of green energy. It has targeted 5.7 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2025 and another 10 gigawatts by 2035.
BloombergNEF expects Japan’s offshore wind capacity to exceed 9 gigawatts by 2030.
“Taiwan is a lively market with diversity of players, both local and global ones,” Bausenwein said. “We are well-positioned for any future auction with our commitment and what we have delivered.”
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
RSS