“Head south in the Changhua Coast Industrial Park’s Xianxi Section and a big lagoon and large expanse of wetlands will suddenly appear, with fishing boats lazily gliding on the water. A bright light flashes on the horizon, generated by solar panels.
What one sees is the industrial park’s Lunwei East section, a zone designated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) as Taiwan’s first green energy area. It has two main goals: revive the idle industrial park lands and develop solar power.
Ultimately, the government hopes the area can emerge as a key contributor to the goal of installing 20 GW of solar power capacity (able to produce about 1.25 times the electricity that would have been generated by the now-mothballed fourth nuclear power plant) by 2025.
In fact, the Lunwei East area is a wetland and lagoon directly connected to the sea. At high tide, the area morphs into a vast ocean, allowing fish and shrimp to swim into the lagoon and even fishing boats to sail in. When the tide recedes, an intertidal zone appears.
This fragile ecosystem is at the heart of a controversy over the Lunwei East area project, and typical of the environmental forces dogging other solar initiatives around Taiwan. CommonWealth has identified three major types of controversies holding back solar power development.”
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Lu, Kuo-chen. Common Wealth 6 August 2020.