Taiwan eyes a four-fold jump in renewables generation

This comes after its commitment to drop nuclear energy.

Taiwan’s new government led by President Tsai Ing-wen pushed through legislation, in January 2017, to make the island state free of nuclear power. All nuclear generation is to stop by 2025, and will be replaced partly by renewable energy and partly by gas-fired plants, according to Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

“We would like to move away from fossil fuels, which accounted for 81% of power generation last year: 45% coal, 32% gas and 4% oils. The plan is to reduce coal’s contribution to 30%, increase power from gas to 50% and get the balance 20% from renewables by 2025,” Chung-Hsien Chen, senior specialist at the Bureau of Energy in Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, said in an interview.

Here's more from IEEFA:

That would require a four-fold jump in generation from renewables, mainly from solar and wind. The target is to install 20GW of solar power, 3GW of offshore wind plants and more than 1GW of wind onshore by 2025. And there are some near-term goals too. By June 2018, the island nation plans to have about 2.5GW of solar installed, including a large chunk on rooftops.

Renewable energy developers are offered 20-year feed-in tariffs. The highest tariff offered in 2017 is for small onshore wind turbines (28 US cents), followed by small-scale solar systems (19.1 US cents) and offshore wind (18.9 US cents).

In January 2017, Dong Energy and Macquarie Capital bought stakes in the 128MW Formosa I offshore wind project in Taiwan from Swancor Renewable. It is expected to be the island’s first commercial-scale offshore wind project. Dong Energy is also developing four offshore wind sites in the Changhua area, totaling 2GW of planned capacity, a statement from the company said. Construction is proposed to be started in 2021-2024.