RENEWABLE ENERGY

At the end of 2008, the total installed electricity generation capacity was 46,381.6 MW in Taiwan, including a capacity of 7,733.3 MW of co-generation plants. The total installed capacity of renewable energy is now 2,967.6 MW, within which hydropower is 1937.9 MW, photovoltaic power is 5.6 MW, wind power is 252.1 MW, and biomass power is 772.0 MW, including a capacity of 649.7 of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) . The electricity generation in 2008 totaled 238,325.9 million kWh, of which only 3.52% came from renewable energy.

As a first concrete step to cope with the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and international efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions, a draft of the “Renewable Energy Development Bill” has been proposed by the Bureau of Energy in 2002 and revised in 2005 and 2008, and now awaits for final approval by the Legislative Yuan. It sets a fixed feed-in tariff for electricity generated from renewable energy. At present, the Taiwan government uses interim measures such as financial and tax incentives, equipment subsidy, premium power purchase agreement (ppa) unilaterally enforced by the stated-owned Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) , as well as projects supporting the development and promotion of renewable energy through the Energy Research and Development Special Fund and the Petroleum Fund.

According to the Taiwan Energy Policy Whitepaper (2006), in order to achieve sustainable development targets in the future, the future development strategies of energy include: to facilitate the promotion and utilisation of non-carbon renewable energy, to expand the utilisation of low carbon (LNG) clean energy, to adopt high efficiency power generating equipment, to promote co-generation system, to improve transmission line loss, to conserve energy and raise energy utilisation efficiency, to rationalize energy price, and to facilitate an adjustment in industrial structure.

In Taiwan , the target for installed capacity of renewable energy has been set to be 14.9% of total installed capacity (excluding a capacity of co-generation plants) by 2025,. The development of renewable energy has become a common consensus in Taiwan.