A wind farm in Taiwan. Photo credit: Maggie Chou – CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia.

By Anders Lorenzen

Europe dominates the offshore wind market, where by far the largest amount of capacity is installed. But as countries across the world look to cut their carbon emissions to meet the Paris Agreement, they want in on the act too.

One such country is Taiwan. The island state lacks traditional energy sources and is therefore largely reliant on energy imports. As a result, they’re keen to diversify their energy supply, developing alternative and greener forms of energy production. Overall wind power capacity on the island has been steadily rising since the early 2000’s, and the first offshore wind farm came online in 2017. Earlier this year the Taiwanese government also granted licenses for eleven offshore wind farms totalling 3.836 gigawatts (GW) worth of capacity.

One of the companies betting big on offshore wind in Taiwan is Denmark’s Orsted (formerly known as DONG Energy). They have won licenses for two of the eleven offshore wind farm licenses, totalling capacity worth 605.2 and 294.8 megawatts (MW). Orsted has since then also won two other extension licenses for the Greater Changhua offshore wind farms, taking it up to four wind farms with a total capacity of 2.4 GW.

Henrik Poulsen, CEO of Orsted, said: “As the Taiwanese government established an ambitious 20% renewables target by 2025, offshore wind will play a significant role in contributing to Taiwan’s green future. As the world’s leading renewable solution provider, Ørsted is committed to building offshore wind farms off the Changhua coast on time to support the transition to clean energy in Taiwan.”

Credit: Orsted.

It is estimated that once complete, the Greater Changhua offshore wind farms will deliver clean energy to approximately 2.8 million households in Taiwan.

With those projects, as well as the other renewable energy projects in the country, the government has taken a huge step in producing more home grown energy for their 23.5 million inhabitants.