Energy Justice Concerns of Nuclear Power in the 2025 Energy Transition Vision of Taiwan and Net Zero Roadmap of 2050

Abstract

Energy justice emerged as a crosscutting social science research agenda aiming to apply justice to energy policy, energy production and systems, energy consumption, energy activism, energy security, and climate change. The scope is suitable for analyzing the efforts of the Taiwan government (TG) when designing the 2025 Energy Transition and nuclear-free Vision planned since 2016 and the 2050 Net Zero Roadmap since 2021. This perspective on a nuclear-free country without any exception presents concerns related to energy justice and will be explored in this chapter.

This chapter was completed with funding from the National Science Council: project number: 112-NU-E-007-002-NU.

1 The Energy Transition and Net Zero Pathway of Taiwan: Unjust Issues

Energy justice emerged as a crosscutting social science research agenda aiming to apply justice to energy policy, energy production and systems, energy consumption, energy activism, energy security, and climate change.¹ The scope is suitable for analyzing the efforts of the Taiwan government (TG) when designing the 2025 Energy Transition Vision planned since 2016² and the 2050 Net Zero Roadmap since 2021.³ Compared to nuclear power benefits in climate and energy policies of primary countries (UK, US, France, Japan, South Korea, etc.), the TG insists on being nuclear-free by 2025 and decommissioning its second nuclear power plant (NPP) in March 2023.

This perspective on a nuclear-free country without any exception presents concerns related to energy justice. The electricity price increase from April 2023 would be the first issue.⁴ Despite extending existing NPP lifetimes to remediate high fuel costs during the Ukraine-Russia War and information regarding nuclear power life extension from Germany,⁵ no public consultations regarding nuclear power were launched by the TG. Furthermore, the price increase may present further repercussions. No price increase for more than 90% of electricity users (such as households and small businesses) would make this rising unjust. Why should high electricity users be responsible for most of the rising costs?

Intergenerational justice presents an additional issue. Despite the price increase, considering the recent unchanged and insufficient electricity price increase, the state-owned electricity company, Tai-power, experienced a loss of NT$267.5 billion (US$8.74 billion) in 2022 and presumably over NT$500 billion in 2023.⁶ Excluding lacking information regarding the finances spent (US$9.4 billion) on the fourth NPP, which was nearly successfully constructed, the government arbitrarily decided to not operate the power plant. If these cost issues are not addressed, they will be reflected in the mid- and long-term and affect future generations.

2 How Can the Power of Energy Justice Transform the Issue?

A nuclear-free country by 2025 is the central ideology of the current president, its ruling, and the majority of the parliament party. This policy is non-discussable and not a publicly debatable agenda under all following energy transition and net zero plans. The ruling party could even have used its parliamentary majority to pass this 2025 nuclear-free target in the Electricity Act of 2017.⁷ This condition was revoked by the referendum in November 2018.⁸ Nevertheless, the government proceeded with the nuclear-free policy agenda and ignored these results. Therefore, adopting procedural justice,⁹ such as public consultation on the role of nuclear power under the recent Net Zero Roadmap of 2050, would be crucial to correct the presumption of the no-nuclear option on the views of policymakers. Contrarily, Taiwan would be presented with more than 85% of its electricity obtained from fossil fuels after 2025, presenting substantial challenges to the Net Zero 2050 goal.¹⁰

3 Overcoming the Energy Injustices

The TG selected its no-nuclear option on May 25, 2016, five days after the presidential inauguration. It was a political decision without any cautious or nationwide debate. Despite the continuing urge to consider the role of nuclear power in the current Taiwan energy and climate policy by the leading industry union, i.e., the Chinese National Association of Industries,¹¹ and several energy experts, including myself, the government did not consider the 2018 referendum results, where the referendum proposal inquired voters on their agreement with abolishing Paragraph 1 of Article 95 of the Electricity Act, which stipulates that “all nuclear energy-based power-generating facilities shall completely cease operations by 2025,” and 5,895,560 voted in favor of abolishing and retaining the clause, respectively.

Theoretically, additional referendums could correct this governmental unawareness of the votes of its citizens. However, the government sought to increase the stringency of the referendum rules by observing the referendum proposal regarding extending the lifetimes of the existing three NPPs and rejecting this proposal provided by pro-nuclear experts, primarily from the National Tsing Hua University. The final opportunity for this discussion would be the discussion regarding the fourth NPP. The referendum was initiated by nuclear power advocates and alumni of our university. The referendum Huang Shih-hsiu asked voters: “Do you agree that the fourth NPP should be activated for commercial operations?” This referendum was scheduled for voting on August 28, 2021, a date unfavorable to the governmental stance due to the following: 1. nationwide blackouts on May 13 and 17, 2021; 2. untrust regarding governmental COVID-19 measures due to the outbreak in May 2021. Therefore, the government used COVID-19 to postpone the vote to December 18 and successfully made all four referendums against their policy position by unsuccessfully reaching the approximately five million (4,956,367) decisive vote threshold.

Considering the issues faced by Taiwan, the primary challenge for energy injustice is manipulation of the majority and ruling party of the decision-making scheme. The government can select a no-nuclear option in its 2025 energy and 2050 climate policy and actively manipulate the referendum. Direct democracy must succumb to representative democracy, including the energy justice doctrine. The TG uses unjust methods for promoting the 2025 energy and 2050 just transition agendas!

4 Conclusion

Considering the issues faced by Taiwan, the vulnerability of energy justice is prominent. Among the five forms of energy justice implemented through the social contract, procedural justice (due process needs to be followed in the design of the system, i.e., this is about ensuring not just public participation but also transparency in decision-making on energy policy, energy taxation policy) would be very useful in rectifying current Taiwan’s problem.¹²

Particularly, the citizens of Taiwan used the unique way of referendum to veto nuclear-free legislation, but the TG remains ignoring such results. In addition, in 2022, the government publicly admitted to failing the 2025 (low-carbon electricity) renewable target from the planned 20% to 15.1%,¹³ whereas a net zero target was guaranteed by 2050 (from the original target of a 50% emission reduction by 2050) in 2021. The perspective of the government toward nuclear power remains unchanged, contrasting the softened status of the government of Germany toward the remaining NPPs. Therefore, relying on citizen votes to change the government regime is necessary. Without this, the isolation status of Taiwan from the world would degrade by deviating from just transition to a low-carbon economy!