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.
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