The energy beneath Taiwan's feet — Taipei Times
I published a feature in the Taipei Times on Taiwan’s geothermal potential — a massive, largely untapped resource that has become strategic in the context of the island’s energy transition.
Taiwan holds an estimated 33,000+ MW of recoverable geothermal capacity, concentrated in three zones: the Tatun Volcano Group (2,886 MW), the Yilan Plain (6,170 MW), and the Hua-Tung region (25,754 MW). Yet fewer than 10 MW are currently online. Meanwhile, TSMC alone consumes 2,590 MW per year, and Taiwan imports 97% of its energy.
The piece maps the structural bottlenecks holding back this baseload resource: restrictive vertical-drilling regulations, inconsistent permitting processes, the lack of specialized drilling infrastructure, overlaps with protected parks and Indigenous territories, and a financing gap. A Hualien well drilled by a Swedish company took nearly a year and NT$100 million to complete — compared to six weeks in Iceland for a comparable operation.
The article draws on interviews with key players in the sector — Baseload Capital / Baseload Power, FengYeu Green Energy (Lin Po-keng), and Bernard Sanjuan, a geothermal expert from the French Geological Survey (BRGM) — and concludes that the government must share early-stage exploration risk in order to attract private capital.