European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan launches renewable energy market report
Along with many other countries, Taiwan too hopes to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Together with the RE100 initiative, the European Chamber Of Commerce Taiwan in December announced the release of a renewable energy market briefing report. The report analyzed Taiwan’s renewable energy policy and market changes, as well as barriers to renewable energy procurement in Taiwan. Vice Premier Shen Jong-chin attended the event to respond to the report. FTV reporter Stephany Yang has the details.
The ECCT Low Carbon Initiative and RE100 Taiwan presented the findings of the report titled, "Taiwan Energy Market Briefing: Net-Zero Plan and Aggregated PPA." The report showed that compared to 2020, there have been improvements in the renewable energy sector in Taiwan. The demand for renewable energy has grown, and more Taiwanese companies are also committing to switching to renewable energy.
Henry Chang
ECCT chair
Energy transition to renewables is not just a matter of meeting global commitments. It is essential for Taiwan’s energy security and to ensure that companies stay competitive globally.
However, the report showed that companies are still struggling to procure renewable energy in Taiwan. The top two reasons are high costs and low supply. Representatives believe that the solution is an aggregated power purchase agreement, which will bring two or more companies to enter a PPA.
Alisha Lee
RE100 Taiwan representative
I can start with some of the problems that a lot of our members are facing right now, which is, of course, low supply. And with low supply also comes with high costs. So really, the main thing that we would need to work on is upping the supply of renewable energy, and until then, we have our RE100 members who are here to lead the way and to push the government to hopefully improve on renewable energy policies and, in turn, improve on supply and costs. A lot of our members in other companies are finding it difficult to purchase renewable energy in Taiwan. A possible solution that we wanted to look into is APPAs in which they can aggregate their electricity consumption to meet the demands of producers.
A copy of the report was handed to the Vice Premier of the Executive Yuan, Shen Jong-chin, who responded to the points in the report. He said in recent years, the government has made efforts in the power purchasing process. In the past, the approval procedure took a long time, but now the government has changed from paperwork to an electronic process to improve efficiency. Shen added that there should be more discussions on the topic of aggregated PPAs.
Shen Jong-chin
Vice premier
On the topic of the approval process, in the past, the timetable was quite long. It used to be done in a physical format, but now we have changed it to an electronic one. I learned about the collective purchase agreement. This part seems to be relatively high-cost, and the contract period is relatively long. We will need to discuss this. The advantage of this is economies of scale.
Since 2018, The ECCT’s Low Carbon Initiative has partnered with the RE100 to find ways to supply Taiwan with affordable renewable energy. By collaborating with stakeholders, Taiwan hopes to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
2022-12-09