Taiwan energy profile
Taiwan — a completed nuclear phase-out, an unfinished renewables build-out
May 2025
Last nuclear reactor closed
83.2%
Of 2024 electricity from fossil fuels
1,600 MW
Offshore wind operational vs. 5,700 MW target
~25%
Share of island's electricity TSMC alone could use by 2030
A decade-long policy, completed and immediately questioned
The nuclear phase-out, and the reversal talk that followed it
Fukushima to phase-out:
The 2011 Fukushima disaster shook public confidence in nuclear power across earthquake-prone Taiwan, and when the Democratic Progressive Party took office in 2016, it pledged to phase out nuclear generation entirely by 2025 while targeting 20% renewables in the same year. That policy executed on schedule: a Maanshan plant reactor closed in July 2024, and Taiwan's last operating reactor shut down in May 2025, ending the country's nuclear generation entirely after decades of operation. By 2024, before the final closure, nuclear supplied just 4.2% of Taiwan's electricity, with fossil fuels covering 83.2% (coal and natural gas roughly split) and renewables lagging at just 11.6%, far below the 20% target the phase-out was meant to be paired with.
The 2011 Fukushima disaster shook public confidence in nuclear power across earthquake-prone Taiwan, and when the Democratic Progressive Party took office in 2016, it pledged to phase out nuclear generation entirely by 2025 while targeting 20% renewables in the same year. That policy executed on schedule: a Maanshan plant reactor closed in July 2024, and Taiwan's last operating reactor shut down in May 2025, ending the country's nuclear generation entirely after decades of operation. By 2024, before the final closure, nuclear supplied just 4.2% of Taiwan's electricity, with fossil fuels covering 83.2% (coal and natural gas roughly split) and renewables lagging at just 11.6%, far below the 20% target the phase-out was meant to be paired with.
A government reconsidering what it just finished:
Almost as soon as the phase-out completed, signs emerged that Taiwan might reverse course. In 2025, Premier Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan hopes to "catch up with global trends in new nuclear technologies" — a striking rhetorical shift for a government that had just spent a decade winding nuclear down. Taiwan's legislature passed an amendment permitting nuclear plants to apply for licence extensions beyond the previous 40-year operating limit, opening a legal pathway that didn't exist before. Neither step is a definitive commitment to restart specific reactors, and as of mid-2026 the practical path forward remains unsettled — but the political taboo around nuclear power that had held since Fukushima has clearly weakened.
Almost as soon as the phase-out completed, signs emerged that Taiwan might reverse course. In 2025, Premier Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan hopes to "catch up with global trends in new nuclear technologies" — a striking rhetorical shift for a government that had just spent a decade winding nuclear down. Taiwan's legislature passed an amendment permitting nuclear plants to apply for licence extensions beyond the previous 40-year operating limit, opening a legal pathway that didn't exist before. Neither step is a definitive commitment to restart specific reactors, and as of mid-2026 the practical path forward remains unsettled — but the political taboo around nuclear power that had held since Fukushima has clearly weakened.
The world's chip factory needs more power than Taiwan planned for
TSMC, AI demand, and offshore wind's race to keep up
An industry outgrowing its power supply:
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest contract chipmaker and maker of roughly 62% of the world's advanced chips, saw its own power consumption grow 85% between 2017 and 2022 — around 30 times faster than Taiwan's industrial sector as a whole. TSMC alone now accounts for an estimated 8-9% of Taiwan's total electricity use, roughly double its 2020 share, and faced an approximately 12.5% electricity price increase in late 2024 to help fund grid expansion for its own growth. By one widely cited Greenpeace estimate, Taiwan's semiconductor industry overall could consume twice the total electricity used by all of New Zealand by 2030 — with TSMC responsible for the large majority of that demand.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest contract chipmaker and maker of roughly 62% of the world's advanced chips, saw its own power consumption grow 85% between 2017 and 2022 — around 30 times faster than Taiwan's industrial sector as a whole. TSMC alone now accounts for an estimated 8-9% of Taiwan's total electricity use, roughly double its 2020 share, and faced an approximately 12.5% electricity price increase in late 2024 to help fund grid expansion for its own growth. By one widely cited Greenpeace estimate, Taiwan's semiconductor industry overall could consume twice the total electricity used by all of New Zealand by 2030 — with TSMC responsible for the large majority of that demand.
Wind and Greater Changhua's role:
Offshore wind is central to Taiwan's plan to cover both the nuclear gap and rising chip-industry demand, concentrated in the Taiwan Strait around Greater Changhua — but the build-out has run well behind schedule, reaching only about 1,600 MW operational against a 5,700 MW target for 2025, which officials attribute largely to permitting bottlenecks and transmission constraints. TSMC itself has become a direct buyer of that capacity: Danish developer Ørsted signed a 20-year corporate power purchase agreement with TSMC for 920 MW from the Greater Changhua Southwest and Greater Changhua North wind farms — one of the clearest signals that Taiwan's chip industry now sees securing its own renewable supply as a competitive necessity, not just a compliance exercise.
Offshore wind is central to Taiwan's plan to cover both the nuclear gap and rising chip-industry demand, concentrated in the Taiwan Strait around Greater Changhua — but the build-out has run well behind schedule, reaching only about 1,600 MW operational against a 5,700 MW target for 2025, which officials attribute largely to permitting bottlenecks and transmission constraints. TSMC itself has become a direct buyer of that capacity: Danish developer Ørsted signed a 20-year corporate power purchase agreement with TSMC for 920 MW from the Greater Changhua Southwest and Greater Changhua North wind farms — one of the clearest signals that Taiwan's chip industry now sees securing its own renewable supply as a competitive necessity, not just a compliance exercise.
Questions
Questions about Taiwanese energy
Why would Taiwan reconsider nuclear power right after finishing a decade-long phase-out?
Because the assumptions the phase-out was built on have shifted faster than almost anyone expected. When Taiwan committed to phasing out nuclear in 2016, the plan was to replace it primarily with a 20%-renewables target alongside natural gas — a plan that already assumed steady, predictable demand growth. What nobody fully priced in was the scale of the AI boom: Taiwan's own energy authority raised its official demand growth forecast in 2024, citing machine-learning electricity consumption expected to grow roughly eightfold by 2028, layered on top of TSMC's chip-manufacturing demand that was already growing far faster than the rest of Taiwan's industrial sector. At the same time, the renewable build-out that was supposed to replace nuclear has badly underperformed its own targets — offshore wind reached less than a third of its 2025 capacity goal, and solar and onshore wind fell short too, largely due to permitting and grid bottlenecks rather than a lack of wind or sun. With fossil fuels covering over 80% of electricity even before accounting for AI-driven demand growth, and renewables running years behind schedule, nuclear's near-zero-carbon, always-on generation profile has become harder to dismiss politically than it was in 2016 — even though the underlying public safety concerns that drove the original phase-out (Taiwan's earthquake exposure, post-Fukushima anxiety) haven't gone away, which is exactly why the government has so far only opened a legal pathway rather than committing to specific restarts. Source: Taiwan Business TOPICS (AmCham Taiwan) · Al Jazeera · Bloomberg.
Provenance
Attribution and citation
- Sources
- POWER Magazine · Taiwan Business TOPICS (AmCham Taiwan) · New Lines Institute · Global Energy Monitor · IEEE Spectrum · Yale Environment 360 · Bloomberg · Al Jazeera · GlobalSecurity.org (citing Taiwan Energy Administration data)
- Cite as
- "Taiwan Energy Profile — Complete Reference", The Energy Codex, https://thecodex.expert/energy/countries/taiwan/, last updated .