The Ministry of Economic Affairs aims to quadruple the nation’s share of electricity from renewable sources to 90 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) by 2030, it said yesterday, as a growing number of local enterprises set goals to achieve carbon neutrality.
Renewable energy, primarily from solar and wind sources, soared more than 80 percent to 23.8 billion kWh last year from 12.7 billion kWh in 2016, Bureau of Energy data showed.
The ministry’s announcement came after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Tuesday said that it would not be able to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 because of a scarce supply of renewable energy in Taiwan. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker joined the global corporate renewable energy initiative RE100 in 2020, committing to use only electricity from renewable sources by 2050.
Photo: Liao Chia-ning, Taipei Times
“The supply of 20 million kWh is insufficient,” company chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) told shareholders during its annual general meeting.
TSMC’s overseas fabs in China and the US have reached a balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon emissions, Liu said.
The company reached net zero emissions by using renewable energy sources, and purchasing carbon credits and renewable energy certifications to offset emissions, the company said in its annual report.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa Cheng, Bloomberg
Liu urged the government to step up its renewable energy efforts and called on state-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) to increase the supply of electricity from renewable sources.
Only 10 percent of the electricity available for local businesses is sourced from renewable energy, he said.
The chipmaker operates a 12-inch fab and an 8-inch fab in China and an 8-inch fab in the US through its subsidiary WaferTech LLC. In Taiwan, it operates four 12-inch wafer gigafabs, four 8-inch wafer fabs and one 6-inch wafer fab.
TSMC also said its power consumption would continue to rise as it builds more facilities in Taiwan.
More than 75 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity consumption, it said.
The chipmaker purchased 900 million kWh of electricity from renewable sources last year, Liu said.
In April, the company signed on to a joint procurement renewable energy program in Taiwan and a long-term renewable purchase agreement with ARK Power (誠新電力) to provide TSMC and its suppliers with 1 billion kWh per year for 20 years. TSMC would use half of that supply.
The bureau yesterday dismissed the chipmaker’s criticisms, saying that the government has liberalized the nation’s green electricity market, and that every company has full access to renewable energy from private power providers, or independent power developers.
The bureau said it respects the free-market mechanism.
Taipower is obligated to purchase renewable energy from power developers through a feed-in-tariff mechanism, the bureau said in a statement yesterday.
It also allows for supplying electricity from renewable resources to private enterprises, as energy purchase agreements with suppliers are severable contracts.
Private power suppliers are allowed to end contracts with Taipower and to sell power to new buyers, the statement said.
About 120 companies sourced 2.55 billion kWh of renewable energy last year, it said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
RSS