A government program to develop solar energy has harmed farmers and threatens Taiwan’s food security, a group of academics said yesterday.
Taiwan’s land use laws have been steadily deregulated to facilitate photovoltaic construction since 2015, but there has been a steady trend away from the principle of sustainable development, the academics said in a petition, which had garnered 80 signatures.
The government must establish clear standards and procedures to select sites for solar installations to minimize the impact on farmers’ and fishers’ livelihoods, the environment and food security, the petition said.
Photo: Taipei Times file
Regulations give officials “virtual carte blanche” to declare farmland to be unsuited for agriculture, National Chung Kung University (NCKU) professor of urban planning Huang Wei-ju (黃偉茹) said.
The land is rezoned for use as solar farms with almost no factual basis, Huang said.
For example, 500 hectares designated as agriculture-only in Changhua County’s Dacheng Township (大城) was rezoned to permit photovoltaic construction, despite 89 percent of the land being intensively cultivated, she said.
Taiwan needs 132,000 to 570,000 hectares for green energy installations to achieve its 2025 target of 40 to 80 gigawatts generated from renewable sources, NCKU professor of urban planning Chao Tsu-yuan (趙子元) said.
That would require a comprehensive rethinking of national land use plans, a process that the government has not gone through yet, Chao said.
Failure to address controversies arising from the selection of solar energy sites would complicate implementation of zoning plans over the next two years, National Chengchi University (NCCU) assistant professor of land economy Tai Hsiu-hsiung (戴秀雄) said.
Green energy zones should be established under the Electricity Act (電業法) and Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條例), not extemporized by executive order, Tai said.
The effects of renewable energy installations should be more extensively examined in environmental impact assessments, he said.
It would be a mistake for Taiwan to fixate on net zero carbon emissions at the expense of other considerations, or reduce the challenge of mitigating climate change to merely installing renewable energy installations, National Taipei University professor of urban planning Liao Kuei-hsien (廖桂賢) said.
Rushing to build solar and wind farms without adequate planning would lead to a host of long-term problems, including loss of biodiversity and food production, Liao said.
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