Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) have formed about 20 teams to conduct geothermal exploration around Taiwan next year, with an aim of generating 1 gigawatt (GW) of geothermal energy by 2028, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lien Ching-chang (連錦漳) said on Thursday.
Speaking at a renewable energy summit, Lien said the government would continue to put the utmost effort into promoting sustainable energy, such as wind, geothermal, solar and hydropower.
According to Lien, the government has set an objective of producing sustainable energy to account for 60-70 percent of the country's total power generation in 2050, when the global energy sector is bound to reach net-zero emissions by deploying a wide portfolio of clean energy technologies.
Photo: CNA
To serve that end, some 20 CPC-Taipower teams are poised to kick off a geothermal exploration project across Taiwan next year.
The exploration task followed the drilling of Taiwan's first deep geothermal well in Yilan County's Yuanshan Township (員山) last month, with the work expected to be completed in June next year.
The country's shallow geothermal energy potential is about 1 GW and its deep geothermal energy potential has an estimated high of 40 GW, with the potential to develop 10 GW of geothermal energy, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said at a ceremony marking the start of the drilling,
According to Lien, Taiwan ranked the world's seventh in terms of offshore wind power installation capacity last year, with a generation capacity surpassing 2 GW, evidenced in that as of August this year, Taiwan had erected 364 wind power plants, with a generation capacity hitting 2.7 GW.
Renewable energy accounted for only 10.5 percent of total electricity generation in the first nine months of this year in Taiwan, up from 9.1 percent during the same period last year, but still far below the government's 20 percent target for next year.
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