Taiwan’s Energy Policy at the Crossroads in the Presidential Election in 2024?

by Anthony Ho-fai Li

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Photo Credit: Russ Allison Loar/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED.

The following article is part of a special joint issue between New Bloom and Taiwan Insight on the 2024 elections. 

Conflicts and Cooperation with the Existing Energy Policy

ENERGY POLICY REMAINS a highly controversial policy arena in Taiwan after democratisation, given its importance for Taiwan’s security, environmental sustainability and economic development. Under the presidency of Tsai Ing-wen, the agenda of “Nuclear-free Homeland 2025” (2025非核家園) proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2016 has been subject to political challenges, which involved the debates about the use of nuclear energy beyond 2025 and the reduced capacity of coal-fired electricity plants for air pollution mitigation. The policy strategy to replace nuclear energy with rapid solar energy development has also faced enormous social challenges as its large-scale installation conflicts with the existing land uses.

Joining the global communities of countries which transit toward a net-zero target, Taiwan has officially declared the policy goal to achieve net-zero by 2050 and formulated the blueprint last year in 2022. While renewable energy development is an important strategy for Taiwan to offset the carbon emissions from its carbon-intensive industries and household consumption, its relevance goes beyond the environmental since it also helps to sustain Taiwan’s economy by enhancing the competitiveness of Taiwan-based enterprises to meet the increasingly stringent low-carbon requirements in trades with the European Union and the United States, and by fostering economic cooperation between Taiwan and the world as in the recent Enhanced Trade Partnership between Taiwan and the United Kingdom. In these domestic and international contexts, it is important to examine the energy policies of different presidential candidates in the upcoming presidential election and see how they propose to resolve the conflicts and maintain cooperation essential for Taiwan’s future with sustainability.

The Proposed Energy Policies of Respective Presidential Candidates

ALL THREE PRESIDENTIAL candidates from the Kuomintang (KMT), the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), and the DPP have made available their energy policies on their electoral platforms. The KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) outlined his energy policy where he proposes to achieve net zero for Taiwan by 2050 through what he calls the “pragmatic promotion” of renewable energies, the reinforcement of the nuclear energy infrastructure, and the priority of energy saving. Amidst his emphasis on the reduced dependence on the import of energy sources and the need for a stable energy supply with smart-gird development, he is the only candidate to pledge “Zero Coal” by 2040 for air pollution mitigation.

For Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), the presidential candidate of the TPP, his energy policy suggests that Taiwan needs to reach net-zero by 2050 with the strategies to develop a wider range of renewable energies and to increase investment in related technologies. He argues that nuclear energy is essential for Taiwan as a transition energy and advocates for reduced dependence on imported energy sources. Moreover, he points to the need to develop a smart electricity grid, energy storage technology, and the renewal of the energy infrastructure for the sake of a stable energy supply. Ko distinguishes himself from others in urging a re-consideration of the financially unsustainable model of Taiwan Power Company and Taiwan’s CPC Corporation with a halt to the endless subsidies and electricity price suppression.

The DPP presidential candidate, Lai Ching-te (賴清德), announces his energy policy with details about his vision and strategies to achieve net zero by 2050 through the decarbonisation of the electricity sector for Taiwan while balancing the need for energy supply stability and economic growth. Following the previous DPP’s energy policy, he proposes to continually increase the installed capacity of various renewable energies and to have a wider application of innovative technologies for energy storage and the strengthening of the resilience of the energy infrastructure. These are also followed by measures for deeper energy saving. Moreover, he insists on a leading role of the government to support the green technology sector and to regulate the gradual reduction of carbon emissions for all the energy-intensive industries in Taiwan. While he briefly mentioned his commitment to the road toward the complete phase-out of nuclear energy, he did not specify a time for nuclear energy to go into history, which may leave him some room for his previous suggestion that nuclear energy be used as a back-up capacity for emergencies.

Same Objectives, Different Instruments

WITH THE BRIEF juxtaposition of their energy policies, it is not hard to see that all three presidential candidates reasonably put energy security as an integral part of their respective energy policies with the enhancement of Taiwan’s capability to domestically generate the electric power it needs, given its geographical location surrounded by the ocean. Moreover, they all propose a technological fix to the fragility of the existing energy infrastructure, which may be attributed to their common understanding of this issue as a political problem manifest in the public outpours after the repeated power blackouts in the past years and as a security problem revealing a serious weakness in Taiwan’s defence as cautioned by foreign observers. Also, all the presidential candidates reach a consensus on achieving the net-zero target by 2050 with the promotion of a wider range of renewable energies. Despite the different stands these candidates have toward Mainland China, the international cooperation on renewable energies with the West is unlikely to be downgraded even under Hou’s and Ko’s proposed foreign policies.

The stark differences in their respective energy policies lie principally in two areas of issue: 1) the extent to which renewable energies constitute the energy mix in relation to the use of nuclear energy (Table 1), and 2) the policy priority of the government in either fostering the supply-side management of the energy generation with the aggressive investment in Information Communication Technologies and green industries as in Lai’s proposal, the demand-side management with extensive energy saving as in Hou’s vision, or the demand-side management with the reflection of actual cost of electricity generation as in Ko’s suggestion.

Issues Under the Radar

IT IS PERHAPS interesting to note about what energy-related issues receive less spotlight. First, non-DPP candidates did not show much disagreement with the energy-related laws such as The Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條例) which requires the mandatory installation of renewable energies for some high energy consumers; The Climate Change Response Act (氣候變遷因應法) which introduces the carbon fee for high energy consumers; and The Electricity Act (電業法) which develops the electricity market with the sales of green energy under the liberalisation of the electricity sector. These policy measures were all newly ingrained into the laws under the presidential-parliamentary dominance of the DPP over the past eight years. The former two put an additional financial burden on selected stakeholders to pay for carbon emissions, while the last one runs the political risk of having upward price adjustment beyond the government control when the electricity price reflects production costs. It remains to be seen whether the non-DPP candidates tacitly agreed to all these measures or they would rather focus on the higher stakes during the election and roll back some measures afterwards. In any case, the DPP has successfully increased the cost of policy reversal since it will be politically challenging for the divided opposition parties to amend these laws without the endorsement of the DPP after the election.

Second, the idea of just energy transition (公正能源轉型), which refers to a fairer distribution of benefits among different stakeholders as advocated by the environmental non-governmental organisations in Taiwan, did not get the attention it deserves. While the three presidential candidates all hint at energy justice by saying that they strive to make energy transition as inclusive as possible, their respective coverages on how to achieve a just energy transition are only a bare minimum as compared to other issues. For Hou, it is discussed under a compensation framework where low-income households were promised to be subsidised and workers be compensated for any job loss due to net-zero transition. Lai simply aligns himself with the slogan of “leaving no one behind” by the UN Sustainable Development Goal and aspires to provide equal opportunities for all stakeholders with his long-promoted idea of  “inclusive green growth”. Ko appears to patch up a few policy suggestions, such as subsidies for the socially disadvantaged and sponsorship for small-and-medium enterprises as well as local communities affected by energy transition without a coherent rationale behind them. It remains to be seen how the way renewable energies (especially solar energy) have been promoted in the previous years can be changed to the greater advantage of the general public through a higher level of substantial participation.

Looking Into the Future

AFTER A BRIEF review of the proposed energy policies of the three presidential candidates, it may be interesting to note that the three candidates share common paradigmatic ideas of preserving the energy autonomy of Taiwan and pursuing the same objective of achieving net zero by 2050 despite their discursive efforts to distinguish themselves on many occasions. There also appears to be no discernible disagreement among them on the need to gradually internalise the environmental costs of carbon emission into the electricity pricing for manufacturers and households and the (unfortunate) marginality of energy justice in their energy policies. They are, however, fundamentally different in the proposed policy programs in relation to nuclear energy and the policy priorities which bring the Taiwanese to the promised land with sustainability.

Indeed, presidential candidates may not honour their words after being elected, and this is more likely the case for energy policy. This inconvenient truth could have nothing to do with personal integrity but the inherent cognitive uncertainty of the decades-long energy transition, which is characterised by highly unpredictable technological advancement in renewable energies and the (in)effectiveness of different policy measures for carbon reduction when it comes to the complex interactions between stakeholders in the society. The process is also likely to be ridden by high normative uncertainty about the degree of social transformation to which people in a country are willing to accept the net-zero objective. In any case, a comparison between the electoral platforms prior to the election helps us better understand why some policy ideas may become “sticky” in the energy policy in the future. At the same time, some are relatively malleable regardless of whether there will be a change in the ruling party.