In the case of a hypothetical blockade of Taiwan by China — partial or total — the island’s energy stockpiles are better measured in days than months or years, even after planned increases. According to the Bureau of Energy, Taiwan has 39 days of coal, 146 days of oil and 11 days of natural gas stockpiled. On those terms, as it imports the vast majority of its energy supply (98% in 2021), and its Ministry of Economic Affairs said last year it expects just 15.1 percent of Taiwan’s electricity to come from (indigenous) renewable sources by 2025, the island looks easy to cut off.
So, what should it do?
For analysts such as Jeff Kucharski, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), or Jordan McGillis, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, one solution is obvious: nuclear power. Their case is that while renewables still make up such a small percentage of energy supply in Taiwan (8% right now), the only realistic way to diversify away from imported fossil fuels is through nuclear. They believe this because of the large amount of clean (carbon free) energy it can generate quickly, but also because nuclear fuel stored on site at nuclear power plants typically only needs to be replaced every 18 to 24 months. That makes Taiwan harder to cut off.
But here’s the problem with that solution: Democratic Taiwan has voted against it, repeatedly. And it’s been shutting down nuclear reactors rather than opening them up. In 2021 the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) held a referendum on whether the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) should be unsealed and operated commercially. The result was that around 47% of voters voted for and 53% of people voted against. Prior to that, the DPP had been elected in 2016 under the promise of building a “nuclear-free homeland”, and although a 2018 referendum voted against entirely ruling out the use of nuclear power, two of Taiwan’s three existing plants underwent decommissioning. The third and final nuclear plant operating in Taiwan is currently scheduled for expiration in 2025. Its operator, Taipower, applied to decommission it in 2021.
The reasons for this positioning are complex. As journalist Brian Hioe (丘琦欣) has set out, there is some degree to which party loyalty plays a role. Nuclear power was first established under the pre-democratic, authoritarian regime of the Chinese National Party (KMT) and thus is somewhat tied to that legacy. That includes the dumping of nuclear waste on Orchid Island (蘭嶼) without indigenous people’s permission. On the other hand, the DPP was officially founded in 1986, only months after the Chernobyl disaster, which sparked years of protests against nuclear power in Taiwan. Votes on nuclear issues have subsequently followed these party lines.
Aside from party loyalty, two infamous nuclear disasters have also clearly influenced Taiwanese thinking. The Chernobyl disaster as mentioned above, and the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The latter saw the potential risks of nuclear power become more salient, particularly as Taiwan regularly experiences earthquakes and typhoons. “It’s not safe,” Zoe Lee (李菁琪), a human rights and environmental lawyer who’s also a Taiwanese Green Party candidate for the Legislative Yuan told me in an interview last week. She pointed to the reports of safety incidents across Taiwan’s power plants as the key to her skepticism and said that renewables were the answer for Taiwan.
From speaking to others involved in Taiwan’s climate politics, I’ve got the sense that there’s some frustration that even after multiple victories in various votes this issue is still something journalists want to discuss. However, there remain powerful voices in the other direction who are still speaking up. KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜), for instance, will reveal his energy policy in July, but has already said he considers nuclear power a viable option. Meanwhile, former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) — of the same party — has been outspoken on the issue, saying earlier this year that “[Lack of nuclear power] could become a very important weakness of our national security. Mainland China doesn’t even have to fire a shot. They could just announce: ‘Stop exporting [liquified natural gas] to Taiwan’ and suddenly we cannot cook!”
On top of views like that, though, there are those who take a more ambiguous position. Richard Bush, for instance, the former chairman and managing director of American Institute in Taiwan, hinted in a speech in Taipei earlier this year that he might believe in a change of direction on nuclear energy, but was very careful in how he worded it. “Political forces can block what they oppose but complicate the effort to formulate a solution that is ‘good enough’ for all concerned,” he said, “The net result may be that coal and oil will continue to occupy a significant share of the energy mix.” Asked by an audience member if Taiwan needed nuclear power in the event of a conflict with China, he said “if there were a war … it would be too late to change the energy mix,” but declined to offer a direct opinion on what direction Taiwan should go in now.
That caution is understandable for a couple of reasons. First, in the same Q and A session, Bush warned against the temptation to suspend democracy in the belief it made defense easier, but in recent times “national security concerns” have been used to justify everything from controversial media freedom laws to concerns over road accident numbers in Taiwan. A conflict scenario that remains hypothetical can’t be allowed to win every political argument that comes up, particularly as part of what Taiwan wants to maintain is its democracy.
Second, some of the certainty from people like Ma (“The current government’s policy to develop renewable energy to replace nuclear power is, I think, the most stupid policy in the world”) seems based on quite a limited view of what is possible. For instance: Part of the reason Taiwan’s renewable energy production hasn’t been able to increase its share of overall power generation as quickly as planned is that energy consumption has continued to rise in line with economic growth, yet the apparently sober, “realistic” analysis from several pro-nuclear voices doesn’t even take the time to address the idea that using less energy makes the apparently all-important self-sufficiency easier. Other ideologies are available.*
Nevertheless, if you’re guessing where Taiwan goes from here, you probably don’t bet on a degrowth option. Rather, the current mood music is this: Nuclear hasn’t been an option under President Tsai as she has invested too much of her political reputation in running against it, but nuclear advocates have often suggested “after her term ends in 2024, there is a chance for the DPP to pivot.” And there have been recent signs that this could happen. Last month, Tsai’s potential successor, DPP presidential candidate Vice President Lai Ching-te (賴清德), said government agencies were studying the feasibility of maintaining shut reactors so they could be restarted if needed for emergency use.
Maybe that’s the start of a new offer to the public. Or maybe it isn’t. The only really certain thing is that the arguments will continue.
Image: Toach Japan, CC BY 3.0
*As Adrienne Buller, a Senior Fellow at the Common Wealth think tank, pointed out in her book The Value of a Whale, the most commonly floated climate solutions are very often premised on maintaining existing income streams and patterns of consumption. But this is a choice. “Most of what we assume to be immutable has been, in other times and places, arranged quite differently,” as anthropologist David Graeber pointed out.)
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