The Ministry of Economic Affairs on Friday said it expects the nation to obtain 15.1 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025, falling short of a 20 percent target set by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2016.
The Taiwan Energy Statistics Year Book report, published on Friday by the Bureau of Energy, said that the share of renewables in the nation’s electricity mix had increased to 6 percent by the end of last year and is expected to reach 8 percent by the end of this year.
After taking office in 2016 — when renewables accounted for 4.1 percent of Taiwan’s electricity mix — Tsai laid out plans to obtain 20 percent of the nation’s electricity from renewables by 2025, with 50 percent coming from natural gas and 30 percent from coal.
Photo: CNA
The plan was part of a campaign promise to phase out the country’s three remaining nuclear power plants, which provided about 9.6 percent of Taiwan’s electricity last year.
The report blamed the target shortfall on increasing demand for electricity.
Electricity consumption last year rose 4.5 percent from a year earlier, driven by increased production in the manufacturing sector after the global economy rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic, the report said.
Meanwhile, integrating renewable energy sources into the grid in a way that allows them to operate at full capacity remains a challenge, with grid connections for renewable sources not expected to be completed until the end of 2025, it said.
The government is now hoping to realize Tsai’s 20 percent target by October 2026, it added.
By utilizing power generation from offshore wind farms, solar projects and biofuel energy, the government aims to increase the share of renewables to 21 percent in 2027 and 23 percent in 2028, the report said.
As of the end of last year, the nation’s total solar installation only reached 7.7 gigawatt (GW), missing the government’s target of 8.75GW, energy bureau data showed.
It was the third consecutive year Taiwan failed to meet its solar installation goal.
The 2020 target was 6.5GW, but only 5.82GW was operational at the end of that year, the data showed.
To achieve the government’s 2025 target of 20GW from solar installations, it must annually add a capacity of 3GW from this year.
However, the nation’s newly added capacity was 680 megawatt in the first five months of the year, reaching only 22.7 percent of the year’s target, with accumulated installation of 8.38GW far below the government’s expectations.
Companies in the solar industry attributed the slower-than-expected adoption to soaring raw material prices, logistics bottlenecks caused by COVID-19 lockdowns in China, worldwide port congestion and surging freight rates.
The bureau said it had launched several measures to encourage solar installation, including on June 28, announcing it would maintain its solar feed-in tariffs for the second half of the year, citing rising installation costs.
It also started requiring rooftop solar system installation on suitable buildings, regardless of whether they are newly built, extensions or reconstructions, it added.
Additional reporting by Chen Cheng-hui
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce