To promote the use of renewable energy sources, the government allows developers to turn agricultural land into solar farms, but the policy has been criticized for reducing the availability of fertile land.
The National Property Administration has approved a 600 hectare plot of agricultural land in Changhua County’s Fangyuan Township (芳苑) to be developed by five solar energy companies Farmers are protesting the decision.
In 2022, the proportion of energy generated from sustainable sources in Japan reached almost 25 percent. Solar capacity accounted for more than 10 percent of the total at 85 gigawatts, which was behind only China and the US.
There is “coopetition” — competitive cooperation — between the agriculture and solar power sectors for the use of land amid the energy transition in Japan, and there are concerns that solar panels might harm crops.
However, years of experimentation and implementation have proved that crops can grow well as long as solar farms are well designed. More than 50 kinds of fruits and vegetables had no problem in the experiments.
Tokyo has designed two pathways of energy transition: One is to permanently change the use of farmland to generating solar power; the other is to allow farming and solar generation to coexist.
Even given the small scale of power generation, the latter is considered more popular, as it creates value in agricultural landscapes, bringing them back to life and attracting young people to return to their hometowns.
This makes it a win-win situation for farmers and solar firms.
Taiwan’s nuclear-free homeland policy and the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 have driven the development of green energy. Solar panels are scattered across farmlands and fish ponds after the rapid expansion of solar projects.
Although this has contributed significantly to the efficiency of the power supply, it comes at a cost: sacrificing agricultural development, and worsening the self-sufficiency rate for grain production.
Striking a balance is the key to a win-win situation.
Dino Wei is an engineer.
Translated by Fion Khan
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS