As Taiwan navigates its first summer without nuclear power, the rise of AI is reshaping the island’s energy future—fueling demand, reviving nuclear debates, and exposing deep tensions in its transition to cleaner, more flexible electricity sources.
This is Part II of a two-part story. Part I can be found here.
In Taiwan’s current planning for AI-related electricity demand, the largest share comes from the upstream semiconductor industry. At the first meeting of the National Climate Change Countermeasures Committee under the Presidential Office in August 2024, industry representative Terry Tsao, Global Chief Marketing Officer and President of Taiwan, SEMI emphasized that to maintain the stable growth and international competitiveness of Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, the use of renewable energy must be taken seriously.
On October 13, the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA) issued a press release offering recommendations to the government on energy transition, stating that “the semiconductor and electronics industries rely heavily on a stable and clean power supply. However, under the current national energy policy roadmap, numerous problems have already emerged, directly impacting the industry’s international competitiveness.”
The semiconductor industry not only needs electricity but also demands green energy. Since Taiwan began its energy transition under then President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016, with an aggressive push for renewable energy, the actual implementation has faced numerous challenges.
A review by READr of power supply and demand reports over the past five years shows that the actual performance figures have consistently fallen short of targets, forcing the government to keep raising future goals to maintain its policy direction. Meanwhile, as renewable energy development continues to lag, the demand for natural gas – which was initially considered a transitional energy source – has steadily increased.
Taiwan Power Forecast Report 2023. Credit: READr.
As of August this year, Taiwan’s installed solar capacity had only increased by 0.74 GW—still far from the 2 GW annual target. “It’s unlikely to grow much more by the end of the year. This is the first time in eight years that Taiwan’s solar installations have failed to reach the 1 GW mark, falling back to 2018 levels,” said Chia-Wei Chao, Research Director, Taiwan Climate Action Network (TCAN).
In recent years, a series of corruption scandals involving solar farm projects have been uncovered by prosecutors, causing a serious blow to public confidence in renewable energy development. According to a survey by the Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy (TAISE), solar power has consistently ranked as the most favored energy source for Taiwan’s future since 2022. But this year, for the first time, it was overtaken by nuclear power.
Yu-Yu Teng, Director of Media and Communications, Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan, believes that the bottleneck in renewable energy development ultimately lies in social communication. He noted that Taiwan’s solar targets call for 12 GW of ground-mounted installations and 8 GW of rooftop systems. While rooftop solar has already met its goal, the main shortfall lies in ground-mounted projects. “Ground-mounted solar panels often clash with existing land uses, triggering significant public backlash,” Teng said.
For example, in late October 2025, several environmental groups, including Govwatchya and the Changhua Environmental Protection Union, issued a joint statement calling for more reasonable site selection in solar development. “In recent years, a large number of solar farms have been built on hillsides, forests, near national parks, coastlines, reservoirs, wetlands, farmland, and habitats of protected species,” the groups said. “These projects often involve rezoning land for specific industrial use, permanently altering land-use patterns and sparking public backlash over environmental damage.” They urged the government to designate no-build zones for solar projects and tighten environmental impact assessments.
“Large-scale renewable energy development faces serious coordination problems. The Ministry of Economic Affairs has its own agenda, while the Ministry of Agriculture wants to protect the environment. Both are fulfilling their duties, but cross-ministerial communication is extremely bad. The central and local governments also haven’t been able to establish an effective coordination mechanism. As a result, developers are often left uncertain. Once an application gets stuck, costs can’t be recovered easily, and investors quickly back off,” Teng added.
Teng also pointed out that during public debates, the absence of proper policy support from the government leaves room for bad-faith actors to exploit the situation, spreading misinformation about renewable energy or turning the issue into a political attack.
Renewable energy discussions loses focus amid misinformation battles
Chao once analyzed the Chigu solar project, Taiwan’s largest ground-mounted solar development, to understand how it was being discussed online. Using social media analytics tools, he found that the most influential content mentioning “Chigu solar” focused heavily on negative narratives such as “land disputes with residents” and “illegal land acquisition.”
Recently, solar power returned to the headlines after online rumors claimed that cleaning workers had used chemical detergents to wash solar panels at the Wushantou Reservoir following a typhoon, raising fears of water contamination. Although both the government and solar developers clarified that the Wushantou contract explicitly prohibits the use of cleaning agents, and that water quality monitoring showed no irregularities, the controversy brewed. A fact-check report by the Taiwan FactCheck Center also confirmed that the detected chemical traces did not prove detergent use, noting that all reservoir water will be further treated by water plants before reaching households. Despite these explanations, public concern has yet to subside.
Amid this wave of public debate, misinformation has also slipped in. The Taiwan FactCheck Center found that a 2022 video of solar panel cleaning in China was falsely circulated as footage from Wushantou Reservoir. The Taiwan Renewable Energy Alliance (TRENA) held a press conference at the end of October, stating that the discussion around this incident had devolved into “malicious attacks.” Officials, NGOs, academics, engineers, and technicians dedicated to promoting green energy have been forced to repeatedly clarify basic facts, such as that “solar panels do not poison water sources,” while society remains caught up in pointless arguments, slowing the energy transition and undermining energy security.
Facing these controversies, the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced at the end of October that future solar power development would follow a rooftop-first principle. However, environmental groups argue that the government’s efforts to promote rooftop solar panels remain not proactive enough.
Chia-wei Zhao pointed out that nearly all public-sector rooftops capable of supporting solar panels have already been equipped with solar panels, so efforts now need to focus on the private sector. “This year, the government has two main policies for private-sector rooftops,” Zhao explained. “One requires new rooftops over 1,000 square meters to install solar panels. This was legislated in 2023, but the detailed regulations have yet to be announced. The other policy targets smaller rooftops under 1,000 square meters, with subsidies – originally aiming for 0.3 GW of capacity, but small-scale solar installations heavily rely on cooperation from local governments.”
Chao explained that the rooftop subsidy is allocated to local governments, but the current volume of applications from local governments is quite limited. This year, NT$500 million was allocated for subsidies, yet the combined applications from all counties and cities only reached one-tenth of that amount. Local governments may not be actively promoting it, and the slower the rooftop solar initiative progresses, the more misunderstandings the public will have, believing the government is not seriously promoting rooftop installations and only pushing for the more controversial ground-mounted solar projects.
The development of offshore wind power has also faced setbacks, delayed by the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, which slowed progress on offshore wind farms. Some developers canceled contracts due to soaring costs. Although replacements have been found for the planned capacity, international news, such as major Japanese wind power investors withdrawing, highlights a tightening global offshore wind market.
“Offshore wind power has also fallen behind, but on paper there’s still a chance to catch up. What worries me now is the 2030 target,” Chao said. According to the power resources supply and demand report, the first and second phases of site selection for offshore wind projects have been completed, with construction scheduled to be finished gradually by 2030, aiming to reach the 10.9 GW target.
“Currently, internationally, offshore wind companies are facing difficulties with financing. I’m concerned that without clearer policy signals in Taiwan, these companies might change their approach.” Chao said. “Last year, at New York Climate Week, I heard international speakers say that renewable energy development is stalling, and companies can’t secure green power. That was actually about South Korea, which is very similar to Taiwan. But this year, the situation flipped, and many were praising South Korea’s government for demonstrating strong commitment to raising renewable energy targets. For offshore wind developers with limited resources, seeing issues in both the Taiwan and Japanese markets, how will they choose? That could have a major impact on Taiwan.”
“Cutting renewable energy targets will make it even harder for the government to cancel gas power investments,” Chao explained. “With the gas units Taipower currently operates, there’s already enough capacity to meet future demand. Adding new private gas plants would create many challenges for power dispatch. Private operators need to evaluate whether they can recoup costs, but once we reach our net-zero goals, the existing plants are already sufficient, and their operating hours would be limited, so they would actually lose money.”
This year’s National Electricity Power Supply and Demand Report cut a lot of planned future gas capacity. “Of course, we hope gas plants won’t be overbuilt. But if renewable energy development falls further behind next year, the gas units removed from this year’s plan might be added back.”
Public confidence in renewable energy development has been weak, and attention has shifted toward the nuclear plants that the government shut down. Support for nuclear power in Taiwan has never waned. Since the 2017 amendment to the Electricity Act explicitly set a “nuclear-free homeland by 2025,” Taiwan has held three referendums related to nuclear power in attempts to overturn this decision.
AI demand drives nuclear power revival
“Because electricity demand from AI and the tech industry is soaring, nuclear power seems to have become a solution again. At this point, being anti-nuclear feels out of step,” wrote Lee Ken-cheng, Chairman, Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan, ahead of the third nuclear plant referendum. For the anti-nuclear movement, the moment of nuclear power being reduced to zero should have been an unimaginable victory, but the challenges were far from over.
“Part of the context is that the Fukushima disaster is now far in the past, and public perception of nuclear risk has shifted dramatically,” Chao analyzed. He noted that the recently concluded referendum on extending the third nuclear plant faced particularly challenging arguments, including claims of a global nuclear revival, connections between national security and nuclear power, and the additional electricity demand from AI, all of which fueled speculation about Taiwan’s power supply capacity.
At the United Nations Climate Conference (COP28) at the end of 2023, the United States and France jointly proposed recognizing nuclear power’s role in carbon reduction, aiming to triple nuclear generation by 2050. Then AI entered the scene. The IEA’s Energy and AI report noted that surging electricity demand from global data centers means AI could reshape the energy sector over the next decade. While renewable energy and natural gas are expected to dominate due to cost competitiveness and market availability, nuclear power will also play an important role.
The report identifies nuclear power as an important low-emission, dispatchable source to meet electricity demand. However, it mainly refers to small modular reactors (SMRs), which are expected to gradually come online after 2030 and currently have no operational commercial examples. While restarting existing nuclear plants is also listed in the report as a dispatchable option, this mainly refers to plants with relatively short construction times that could be online within 2 to 5 years. The report cites the Three Mile Island nuclear plant as an example, noting that Microsoft and the state of Pennsylvania signed a 20-year power purchase agreement for electricity from the plant, which is expected to restart in 2027.
Similarly, many countries in Southeast Asia are incorporating nuclear power into their future energy plans. Vietnam announced at the end of 2024 that it will build its first nuclear plant, with two plants scheduled to go into operation between 2030 and 2035, and plans to double its installed capacity by 2050. Indonesia aims to include 10 GW of nuclear generation by 2040 and has set an ambitious target of 45 to 54 GW by 2060. The Philippines plans to complete its first commercial nuclear plant by 2032, expand capacity twofold by 2035, and fourfold by 2050. Malaysia’s prime minister also unveiled a nuclear revival plan in August this year, aiming to have a plant operational by 2031.
However, it’s important to note that these Southeast Asian countries are also pursuing ambitious renewable energy expansion plans. In Vietnam’s case, total planned energy capacity is set to quadruple over the next 25 years, driven primarily by solar and wind power, while nuclear power will account for no more than 2% of the mix. Vietnamese energy and environmental expert Nguyễn Đăng Anh Thi told READr that the country’s surging electricity demand has nearly exhausted hydropower, its traditional renewable source, while coal has become increasingly costly and unsustainable. These economic and supply vulnerabilities, coupled with coal’s environmental toll, have prompted the government to pivot toward domestic renewable resources such as solar and wind. In short, Vietnam’s energy strategy aims to strike a balance between ambitious decarbonization, energy security, and economic growth goals, with renewables at its core and nuclear power as a stable, low-carbon supplement.
The Philippines’ energy roadmap also envisions a shift away from coal toward wind and solar power. Under current plans, nuclear generation is expected to account for nearly 7% of the energy mix by 2040, rising to around 8.7% by 2050.
“Among more than 50 global modeling scenarios, only two project a threefold increase in nuclear power, and none envision a power system dominated by it. Even in France, where nuclear accounts for over 70% of generation, the share is expected to decline as aging reactors are decommissioned. Globally, nuclear power is unlikely to exceed 10% of total electricity generation,” Chao pointed out.
“But when nuclear power becomes tied to national security, it creates enormous pressure for policymakers,” Chao said. “When we visited think tanks in Washington, D.C. this year, every single one of them asked why Taiwan doesn’t use nuclear energy to enhance its security. You also constantly see international opinion pieces pushing that same argument.”
For example, Nobel laureate in Physics and former US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, together with US Strategic Command commander Jim Ellis, co-authored an op-ed in Foreign Affairs arguing that energy is Taiwan’s Achilles’ heel. The latest wargaming report from US think tank CSIS also noted that, although Taiwan’s environmentally driven energy transition is well-intentioned, it significantly increases vulnerability in the short term.
From an energy security perspective, is nuclear power a feasible backup option for Taiwan? Chao pointed out that, indeed, relying on seasonal storage for the last 5 to 10% of electricity supply could be very costly, so using nuclear power as a supplement is a reasonable approach in terms of power system planning. “However, this argument overlooks the displacement effects between nuclear and renewable energy in Taiwan,” he added.
Chao believes that past and current experience shows that if Taiwan wants “nuclear and renewables to coexist,” it will inevitably face displacement effects in terms of policy, budget, and the power grid.
He explained that on the policy side, when Taiwan previously relied on nuclear power as the main electricity source, any kind of energy planning naturally resulted in a lower share for renewables. On the budget side, it involves partisan maneuvering. “Once nuclear is allowed as an option, it can be used to block funding for other energy transitions.” Chao cited an example from earlier this year, when the Legislative Yuan reviewed the budget, the opposition party argued that the ruling party insisted on a nuclear-free homeland, and thus sought to reduce subsidies for energy-efficient appliances and small rooftop solar installations.
Finally, there’s the power grid. “Although nuclear power can, in theory, be switched on and off for flexible dispatch, Taiwan’s existing nuclear plants are all aging, so the risks of such operation are high. As the share of renewables rises, the grid will require more flexible resource management, and having an aging nuclear component can constrain that flexibility.”
“These are the issues we need to confront before even talking about coexisting nuclear and green energy,” Chao added.
What kind of electricity is suitable for AI?
The IEA’s report on AI and Energy repeatedly emphasizes that AI requires an uninterrupted power supply, which means finding the right energy mix. This need for “uninterrupted” power has brought renewed attention to nuclear energy, historically seen as a stable baseload source. However, when it comes to both total electricity supply and the types of energy, the experts READr interviewed consistently highlighted one key factor – flexibility.
Nguyễn told READr that he personally does not support the Vietnamese government’s push for nuclear energy. In his previous op-eds, he has argued from multiple angles that, under current conditions, the problems of pursuing nuclear power may outweigh the benefits. He also noted that nuclear proponents often cite Henri Paillere of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who said, “We cannot achieve a clean-energy transition without nuclear power.” However, Paillere also added a less-quoted but equally important point. “But that doesn’t mean every country needs nuclear power.”
Shaolei Ren, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of California, Riverside, who researches AI systems and their societal impacts, told READr that estimating AI’s future electricity demand is inherently uncertain. Large language models and their applications are developing extremely rapidly, but the nature of AI data centers allows us to avoid overbuilding power plants “just in case.”
“Traditional power system planning assumes that every user, including data centers, must be guaranteed continuous full-load power, but this approach is too rigid for AI,” Ren explained. “In reality, the grid only faces capacity shortages a few days each year, typically during hot summer peak periods. Unlike most users, AI data centers have a unique advantage: they are flexible. Through demand response, data centers can temporarily reduce or shift computing loads without affecting long-term productivity.”
He added that governments and utilities should think more creatively about integrating data centers into the grid. “By leveraging the flexibility of data centers, we can use existing capacity more efficiently most of the time, while asking them to temporarily reduce loads during peak hours. This approach helps meet AI’s growing demand without overestimating its electricity burden or causing potential shortages that could stifle innovation.”
Ren emphasized that AI data centers do not necessarily need to rely on coal or nuclear power. “In theory, they could run entirely on wind and solar paired with large-scale storage, but that requires greater flexibility in how data centers manage their loads. Most data centers aren’t fully ready for this yet, but if power capacity becomes a serious constraint, the industry will have stronger incentives to adapt.”
Hsu also believes that in the face of future uncertainties, the most effective approach is not to build more power plants, but to ensure that dispatchable resources are sufficient. These resources include energy storage and geothermal power, but storage is costly, and geothermal is naturally limited, with its development in Taiwan just beginning. He considers demand response management to be the most effective method.
Demand response refers to mechanisms where Taipower provides incentives such as discounted electricity rates, or directly contracts with users, paying them to reduce electricity consumption during shortages to manage peak loads. Hsu noted that Taiwan is already implementing demand response, but there is room for improvement in several areas – the level of user awareness (whether participating users fully understand the program), the number of users (how to expand from large industrial participants to small and medium-sized businesses, or even residential users), and the immediacy of control (whether reductions are managed automatically via a smart grid or still require active user participation).
“In the short term, the most urgent focus should be on whether renewable energy targets are being met,” Hsu stressed. When Taiwan launched its energy transition in 2016, it set a goal for renewables to account for 20% of electricity consumption by 2025. In recent years, however, the government has argued that growing overall electricity demand, effectively increasing the denominator, has raised the actual target, with then-Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua noting it would only be achievable by the end of 2026.
Hsu warned bluntly that if the target is still missed next year, public trust could take a serious hit. “Whether politically or in terms of net-zero and carbon reduction, the pressure would be immense.”
The report was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network as part of the “Dark Side of the Boom” collaborative reporting project on resource-intensive digital technology in Asia. It was lightly edited for length and clarity. The original story can be found here in Chinese. Part II can be found here.
