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
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Taiwanese prosecutors suspect that three people successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia Corp artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said. The trio was detained last week by the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer Inc servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the US has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked Taiwan’s first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the US to take a more active role in curtailing
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) employee bonuses are likely to grow more than 30 percent this year, in line with the past few years as the company’s profits continue to set new records, an anonymous source cited TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) as saying yesterday. TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is committed to taking care of its workers, the source said, citing Wei’s meeting with employees yesterday morning. Wei also expressed gratitude to employees for their contribution to the company’s improving bottom line, the source added. Since 2023, TSMC’s employee bonuses have grown at an annual rate of
RSS