How Tsai failed Taiwan on energy
As a business and energy reporter, I had a front row seat of how President Tsai Ing-wen’s plan for Taiwan’s energy transition fell apart. Warning: rant incoming.
As a Taiwanese-American, I consider myself as having two countries that are equally mine. So when it became blatantly obvious in March, 2020 that one of my countries is going to handle the COVID-19 crisis much better than the other, I didn’t think too long before decamping from LA to Taipei.
Still, as I realized that the move wasn’t going to be just for a month or two, I suffered something of a mini dark night of the soul. How long was I going to be in Taiwan? What was I going to do? The one person that consistently brought a smile to my face during that time was Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan.
I would watch her delightful media appearances over and over on YouTube. She always seems to be perfectly charming yet appropriate, two parts cool and one part plucky. Whether it’s a speech in front of a think tank while speaking in crisp, British-accented English or yukking it up with young online influencers, doesn’t matter. To me this spoke of a new Taiwan with increasing relevance, under a tremendous amount of pressure but handling itself so well, and more connected to the wider world than ever. A country that I can take refuge in, yes, but perhaps also to stay.
My admiration for her only increased after I became a business reporter covering green energy amongst other things. “Taiwan is on its way to becoming the Asia-Pacific region’s renewable energy development hub, President Tsai Ing-wen said yesterday,” I dutifully noted down for the Taipei Times, believing every word.
“You are so naive,” a fellow reporter told me after I enthused about President Tsai’s vision for Taiwan’s energy transition, “you are so naive I don’t even want to explain how wrong you are because you won’t even be able to perceive it.”
The plan to nowhere
Let’s rewind to the year 2016. I was in LA, finding myself, as people do. But more importantly, Tsai Ing-wen was elected to the presidency in Taiwan in part on the “No Nuclear Homeland” policy. By 2025, she promised, not a single kilowatt-hour of electricity will be produced by splitting the atom in Taiwan. What would fill the gap left by nuclear power? Renewable energy! Wind and solar were less than one percent each in 2016. She would grow renewables to 20% by 2025, allowing the shortfall from phasing out nuclear to be covered amply. But what about the rest of the grid and decarbonization? Well, she would reduce the amount of coal to 30% and raise gas to 50%. That would reduce emissions because gas produces roughly less than half the emissions of coal per kilowatt-hour. “20-30-50 by 2025.” Nice round numbers.
Let’s take a look at how it turned out in reality. I can’t take you to 2025 since that would require a Time Machine, and is a year beyond Tsai’s term anyhow, but let’s compare 2016 with 2022, the last year we have complete figures for.
Yeahhhhhh. 20% renewable energy by 2025 is not going to happen. 50% gas (I’ve heard from an oil and gas major) is not going to happen either due to receiving terminal capacity issues. And so 30% coal is certainly not going to happen. In fact, if you compared and contrasted the two grids, what did happen exactly? A few reactors closed and got replaced with mostly solar panels. But now that’s topping out because Taiwan is tiny and running out of good solar sites.
Taiwan had a huge and not-inexpensive push into renewable energy and frankly did not get a lot back in return. In order to encourage development into solar and offshore wind, Taiwan offered some fabulous prices for their power, in the form of 20-year Feed-in-Tariffs: around US$0.16 to 0.22 per kWh, depending on the starting year. Meanwhile, the push for more dependence on gas seems horribly misplaced both on huge price gyrations in the gas market and energy security concerns, as the gas supply is more prone to blockade and the China threat ramped up.
Yo! In the summer Taiwan can keep about 8 days’ worth of LNG on hand. Even without a possible China blockade, we’re talking about two back-to-back typhoons being able to black out the country of TSMC.
Let’s say decarbonization is your only concern though. In that case, you can see that Taiwan has done a whole big song-and-dance to stay in exactly the same place: around 16% low-carbon power. Every time a reactor closes, all our hard-earned gains in renewables gets canceled out. In fact, due to overall growth in the size of the grid, Tsai is in fact almost certain going to be presiding over a Taiwan that is emitting more CO2 as she leaves office next year than when she came in in 2016.
Beyond breaking decarbonization promises, the very basic ask of having enough juice to go around is now in doubt. Under Tsai’s management, Taiwan’s grid has become increasingly fragilized. I’ve covered three island-wide rolling blackouts in the short three years I’ve been an energy reporter in Taiwan. Each one should have been cause for complete root-cause analysis and a rethinking of how we must provision our grid. Instead, each was blamed on some low-level who pressed the wrong button somewhere.
“She’s got to have a backup plan up her sleeve,” I mused with a friend who was similarly concerned .
“Yeah…some insurance. Maybe she’ll find a way to back out of No Nuclear Homeland.”
“Right. She’s too smart to let Taiwan run into a wall like this.”
“Yeah…way too smart.”
Doubling down on No-Nuclear Homeland
Me and my friend…we were…wrong. Instead of finding a way to do a U-turn on the 2025 nuclear phaseout, Tsai went to bat strongly against a 2021 referendum to turn Lungmen — Taiwan’s 4th nuclear power plant — on. Despite the fact that it is an Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), one of the finest reactor designs on the planet, she smeared it as a “scary Franken-reactor” and an antique.
Meanwhile, she went to bat for another Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) receiving terminal, also up for a referendum. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be irresponsible not to build the terminal given Taiwan’s acute dependence on natural gas per Tsai’s policy. But here’s a picture of her as an opposition leader before she was elected. Back then she was opposed to the LNG terminal as building it would entail tearing up our precious algal reefs. No algal reef talk in 2021.
Tsai got her way on both referendums.
By the time she declared Taiwan would go Net Zero by 2050, I was cackling as hard as any other reporter in the press room at the sheer audacity. Right. She took office in 2016, Taiwan is going to be emitting MORE carbon by the time she leaves in 2024, she is going to miss all the grid goals that she set for Taiwan for 2025 widely, and yet she’s confidently projecting that Taiwan will somehow reach Net Zero by 2050.
If you believe that is going to happen, I have a 640MW offshore wind farm off the coast of Yunlin I’d like to sell you.
What now?
The fact of the matter is…and it took me a very long and painful time to acknowledge this…is Tsai is just a politician just like any other. For her, policy is engineered for the political survival for she and hers. Not for the long-term well-being of Taiwan. Readers…just one company alone — TSMC — is using 7.5% of Taiwan’s grid in 2022. That’s projected to increase to 12.5% according to Bloomberg by 2025. We are a country that cannot afford to be tight on juice. If Taiwan goes short on power, the world will go short on chips.
Sometimes I’m afraid that I’m making myself unpleasant by speaking out against the winsome image that Tsai and the DPP has created. I’m even afraid that I’m hurting Taiwan somehow. I well-understand how important it is to Taiwan that we are internationally supported. Does that support change a little if I point out that when it comes to energy at least, Tsai has absolutely been an doofus whose policies have taken the state-run Taiwan Power Company deep into the red and is making Taiwan less safe?
I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know the truth must be spoken since it cannot be hidden forever.
I hope that if you have come to love Taiwan and root for Taiwan, you will still love it despite its messiness and imperfection and crazy political hullabaloos. And yeah. It’s complicated. Despite it all, I still fond of my single cat lady president who did so much to raise our profile in the world.
But her energy policy suuuuuuuuuuucked.
There is some cold comfort in the fact that she is not alone. Taiwan is by far not the only country that went in big for a rainbows-and-unicorn energy transition plan that simply doesn’t work. In fact, wishful thinking as a policy appears to be an epidemic. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Germany and Australia.
But Taiwan can afford this error less than most.
P.S: What’s this I hear? You want to know MORE about how Taiwan is completely ducked when it comes to to energy? Don’t worry, friend! Angelica’s got you covered.
Lights Off: Taiwan’s Looming Energy Crunch — This is the original and if you have time to read just one, hit it.
Fixing Taiwan’s Grid Issues Requires Distribution — Geeking out on grid stuff here
How Can Taiwan Avoid an Energy Crisis? — Lol
Net Zero by…When? — ROFL, even.
Mounting Challenges in the Energy Sector — this one is about how LNG is increasingly a problem.
Headwinds in Offshore Wind Financing — this one is about how banks don’t want to shovel money into Taiwan’s wind farms anymore.
Sadly, I guessed Tsai would suck on energy as far back as 2013 based on something she said about ramping up dependence on natural gas. For an island which doesn't have a large local source of natural gas, that's a terrible idea.
Thanks for your insightful reportage! Keep it up.
In the US, Massachusetts for example, the state is giving rebates to homeowners replacing furnaces if they choose geothermal. How does geothermal energy fit or not fit into Taiwans green possibilities.