Seasonal northeasterly winds swirl through the hills in the Wanli area in northern Taiwan on a December day, unable to disperse the white smoke emanating from the Gengziping hot spring area. The smell of sulfur permeates the air, signaling geothermal activity.    

Lee Chao-shing (李昭興), a 75-year-old professor emeritus of earth sciences at National Taiwan Ocean University (NTOU), has CommonWealth reporters keep an eye on his team’s seismographs. They detect the slightest of tremors, helping gauge the presence of underground faults and the distribution of heat sources. 

(Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

Lee’s team is working on a joint NTOU-Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) research project that has placed nearly 100 seismographs along Taiwan’s northern coast from Shimen and Jinshan all the way to Gongliao in New Taipei City.

The information being collected offers clues to geothermal energy’s potential in the area, and could guide Taiwan’s pursuit of a stable renewable energy source that can provide power even after the sun sets or when the wind dies down.

It might even have implications for how Taiwan can avoid emissions and environmental degradation from power plants run on fossil fuels, including natural gas.   

The Hsieh-ho Power Plant located in Keelung about a half hour drive from the Gengziping area is Taiwan’s only remaining oil-fired power plant, but Taipower hopes to build a fourth LNG terminal there and convert the four-decade old facility into a natural gas-fired plant. 

A geothermal future for the Hsieh-ho plant?

Building an LNG terminal there, however, will require reclaiming 18.6 hectares of land from the sea, equal to about 443 basketball courts. Keelung City Councilor Wang Hsing-chi (王醒之) worries that such a project would destroy more than 70,000 underwater corals in the area. That would inflict even greater damage on the algal reefs spread out along Taiwan’s northwestern and northern coasts than the controversial third LNG terminal being built off the Taoyuan coast.

Lee envisions an alternate solution: turning the Hsieh-ho facility into a geothermal power plant.

“The Keelung submarine volcano is located near Keelung islet,” Lee said, pointing to the islet about 4 kilometers away. 

Drilling an angled well from the sea 2 kilometers down would access the geothermal reservoir, he said, and his team’s initial assessment is that the Keelung area has the potential to generate at least 500 MW of geothermal power, equal to the power produced by one of the Hsieh-ho plant’s generators.   

(Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

Lee’s enthusiasm for geothermal power seems to be gaining momentum around Taiwan. 

A seminar on geothermal energy held by The Society of Wilderness at National Taiwan University in early December, for example, drew more than 100 people.  

In recent years, Society of Wilderness volunteers have observed an ongoing conflict between energy generation and the environment, manifested by air pollution from thermal power plants, threats to algal reefs, and the invasion of farmland and forests by solar panels. Rather than just opposing energy development, the group has dedicated itself to finding energy solutions with minimal environmental footprints.

“The wind and sun are not stable. Among renewable energy sources, we believe geothermal power can serve as a source of baseload power capable of replacing coal,” said volunteer Clara Chen.

The group’s goal is particularly timely. With nuclear power being phased out, coal- and gas-fired power plants not acceptable in a world trending towards zero emissions, and solar and wind power intermittent and their installation behind schedule, Taiwan’s electricity supply is facing a dangerous and unsustainable balance.  

Taiwan’s green energy: Lagging, unstable

The Ministry of Economic Affairs originally planned that renewable energy would account for 12 percent of Taiwan’s electricity generation by the end of 2021, but it has barely hit half of the target.

Offshore wind has been the biggest laggard, falling far short of the 2.6GW (2,600MW) of installed capacity expected by the end of 2021. The MOEA lowered the goal in the middle of the year to a mere 933MW, and only a quarter of that has actually been achieved. As for solar power, about 82 percent of the cumulative installed capacity goal will be attained by the end of 2021.

Why has progress been so slow? The answer, in part, is Taiwan’s size, making it difficult to find the large spaces for renewable energy available in Australia or the United States, for example.

(Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

But under pressure from international brands and determined to improve their own ESG record, Taiwanese companies are more determined than ever to source “green energy.” Thirteen domestic enterprises have joined the renewable energy initiative RE100 and committed themselves to only using renewable energy by 2050. In mid-2020, TSMC signed a 20-year power purchasing agreement with wind power developer Ørsted to buy all of the power to be generated by the 920MW in offshore wind capacity being built by Ørsted, starting in 2026.

It was a signal to every Taiwanese business that the transition to green energy could not be put off any longer.

No green energy to buy: Who’s to blame?

Several companies unencumbered by the demands of major international brands are pushing to transition to green energy on their own, but have found there to be not enough to buy. 

A recent check of the transaction history of direct supply and wheeling certificates registered with the National Renewable Energy Certification Center under the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection indicated that more than 95 percent of renewable energy directly supplied to companies has been bought by TSMC. 
  
Unable to buy green electricity, some companies have decided to build their own capacity. One of Taiwan’s big three telecom companies, Taiwan Mobile, has set a goal of meeting 100 percent of its power needs with renewables by 2040, with 30 percent of it purchased externally and the remaining 70 percent generated in house.

That will not be easy, as Taiwan Mobile President Jamie Lin acknowledged. “To install one wind turbine requires the approval of more than a dozen government agencies,” he said.

False promise of wind and solar

Even if the delays in installing solar and wind facilities get back on schedule, the relatively low efficiency and intermittent nature of those power sources presents another challenge.

Though renewable energy accounts for 20 percent of Taiwan’s installed power generation capacity, it only accounts for 6 percent of all of the electricity produced. It is tantamount to paying the salaries of three employees to handle the workload of only one of them.

That has led Taiwan Mobile to evaluate geothermal and hydropower in addition to procuring solar and wind power, according to the company. 

It is an approach Taiwan as a whole should follow, argued Chang Chia-chi, a senior researcher with the Taiwan Bio-energy Technology Development Association. When discussing the almost total dominance of wind and solar in Taiwan’s current renewable energy policy, Chang could not help but warn that “it’s going to destroy us.”

Japan, South Korea eyeing biomass

Like Taiwan, Japan is also an island country lacking energy resources and could offer a model for Taiwan’s energy future, Chang said.

In Japan’s 2030 energy transition plan, renewables account for 38 percent of total power generated, nearly double Taiwan’s target. Comparing the two countries’ mix of renewables is like juxtaposing the dining table of a family of picky eaters to that of a nutritionally balanced family. 

In Japan’s plan, stable green power accounts for three-times as much of the renewable mix as in Taiwan, which expects nearly 80 percent of its renewable power in 2025 to come from wind and solar. Japan’s renewable mix, in contrast, will consist of roughly 30 percent solar, 8 percent wind, 40 percent hydropower and 17 percent biomass.

Biomass sources include wood, biofuels, biogas, and animal waste, and the power generated is treated as a carbon-neutral renewable energy. 

“Taiwan is the only advanced country in Asia that has stood still on biomass in recent years,” Chang said bluntly.

To reduce carbon emissions and increase green energy production, Japan and South Korea set in motion biomass energy plans more than a decade ago to gradually replace energy generated from coal, while Taiwan has no biomass policy to speak of.

The United Kingdom has also moved aggressively on biomass. As of the middle of 2021, it accounted for 13.5 percent of its total electricity generation and nearly 30 percent of all the renewable electricity it produces, double the amount of electricity it gets from solar power.

Taiwan needs options beyond wind, solar

Could stable green energy really be part of the solution in Taiwan? Maybe, but it will be a huge challenge.

Taiwan currently generates about 15 billion kilowatt hours (15,000 gigawatt hours) of green energy per year. To reach the 46,700 GWh projected by 2025 using only solar and wind power, the pace of solar panel installation and wind power construction will have to grow three-fold and 28-fold, respectively, over the next four years.    

If geothermal power is to fill the gap, it would be necessary to develop 7.2GW of geothermal capacity. Although this goal cannot be achieved overnight, a study conducted by the Industrial Technology Research Institute estimated Taiwan’s geothermal potential at about 30GW of installed capacity, and concerted efforts in this field could limit the stress caused by delays and shortfalls in wind and solar power.  

In the current environment, Circular Taiwan Network founder and chairman Charles Huang (黃育徵) felt that even though wind and solar power technologies are relatively mature, long-term green electricity solutions still need to be diversified, stable, and well distributed geographically.  

Taiwan Research Institute Vice President Lee Chien-ming (李堅明) agreed. “Green energy development has to be diversified,” he said. 

Biomass technology is mature and carbon neutral, geothermal can serve as a source of baseload power, and ocean energy should be developed given that Taiwan is an island, Lee said. “These are all green energy options that must not be ignored.”  

Several companies are already quietly looking into them.  

Tung Ho Steel Enterprise is planning a biogas center, paper and packaging material maker YFY Inc. is Taiwan’s biomass energy leader, Fabulous Power Co. and Taiwan Cogeneration Corp. have teamed up on a geothermal power plant that began operating in late November, and the Taya Group is aggressively developing energy storage systems.

(Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

Huang argued that the government should do more to help companies investing in their own green energy installations.

Because they are mature technologies, wind and solar power have an easy time getting financing and are usually invested in by foreign enterprises or large conglomerates, Huang said. But companies interested in investing in less familiar green energy sources, such as geothermal and biomass, face considerable regulatory and financing hurdles. 

(Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

Geothermal energy, for example, has long been neglected, and given Taiwan’s complicated geography and plethora of land use and development restrictions, policies to promote geothermal power have clearly been too passive.   

Doing their homework on green energy

Ultimately, companies eager to procure green energy will have to do their homework.

“Enterprises have to realize that green power is characterized by variable rather than fixed costs. It’s like the prices of rare earths that vary with changes in supply and demand,” said Scott Hsu, head of Taiwan for Danish energy consulting firm K2M.

The process of procuring green energy, from the assessment of needs and willingness to pay the costs to ensuring its quality and long-term supply, differs greatly from the mindset used to purchase components for physical products prevalent in Taiwan, he stressed. 

The road to a renewable future will be long and difficult, and Taiwan has only just begun. But its regulations and ways of thinking will have to change before a real shift in how green energy is developed and sourced can take place so that it is truly sustainable, eco-friendly, and capable of meeting Taiwan’s energy needs.

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Translated by Luke Sabatier
Uploaded by Penny Chiang