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Taiwanese security experts and retired military officials close to the Kuomintang opposition have called for drastic reforms to make the country’s energy sector less vulnerable against a Chinese attack.
A war game conducted by the independent think tank Taiwan Center for Security Studies found that energy reserves, the electricity grid, storage facilities and crisis planning are far from ensuring even basic energy supplies in the event of a blockage or missile attack by Beijing. .
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military intimidation, economic coercion and efforts to impose diplomatic isolation in recent years to force the island to agree to unification.
As part of efforts to strengthen the country’s defenses, the Democratic Progressive Party government has focused on making the economy – including the energy sector, technology supply chains and communications infrastructure – more resilient.
But participants said the war game – Taiwan’s first public exercise focused on civilian infrastructure, with 180 participants including foreign academics – highlighted several policy shortcomings.
“We have electricity shortages even now, let alone wartime,” said Liang Chi-yuan, a professor at the Taiwan Economic Development Research Center at National Central University, who led the discussions on resilience energy during the two-day exercise. this week.
Liang said that only by reversing plans to phase out nuclear power by 2025 could Taiwan maintain at least some reserve capacity in case fossil fuel supplies were disrupted.
Coal, gas and oil, all imported, still account for 82% of Taiwan’s energy production.
The KMT has long attacked the ruling DPP’s ambition to simultaneously abandon nuclear power, replace coal with more natural gas and increase offshore wind and solar power generation as unachievable.
The elimination of nuclear energy has been part of the DPP’s core values for decades. But in a sign of flexibility, President-elect Lai Ching-te said during his election campaign that nuclear power could be considered a fallback option.
The driving force behind the war game was Richard Chen, a former vice defense minister and navy commander who as a KMT candidate was elected to parliament in January. Chen said the results of the exercise will be used in drafting the national security strategy he intends to propose.
The war game made clear the extreme challenges Taiwan would face in providing power to its population and massive semiconductor industry in the event of an external disruption.
According to participants, if China intercepted at least some shipments of fossil fuels, Taiwan would run out of gas within a few weeks. They suggested retooling power plants to allow them to run on oil or coal, of which Taiwan has larger supplies, as fallback options.
Energy experts have identified the country’s aging, highly centralized electricity grid as the other major vulnerability. Greater Taipei, with its concentration of population, industry and communications infrastructure, relies on supplies from power plants in the center and south of the island, but all transmission passes through three major bottlenecks.
Electromagnetic or cyber attacks that hit or damage any of the three centers could leave the country’s capital and major industrial centers in the dark, Liang said. She added that the government’s plans to make the network more resilient were overly focused on investment in hardware.
The government is promoting the installation of decentralized wind and solar power capacity by industrial users and households, a key step to enable energy supplies even when the grid is damaged. But Liang said much more generous incentives and subsidies are needed to speed up implementation.
The energy team involved in the war game also suggested a review of wartime operating procedures at state-owned Taipower, which have not been updated since 2007. Taipower operates the grid and provides most of the power generation.
Experts said there should be regular public wartime energy supply simulations and conferences to seek input from industry to help plan rolling blackouts, energy rationing and emergency electricity supplies to hospitals and the military they would be needed if an attack reduced energy supplies.