If China chose to blockade Taiwan instead of, or as a prelude to, invading it, the island nation and its high-tech economy would go dark with shocking speed as stockpiles of natural gas, coal and oil ran out, according to one recent assessment.
That’s because the island imports 96 percent of its energy, including almost all of the gas, coal and oil that fuel 80 percent of its power generation. ‘One of Taiwan’s greatest strategic vulnerabilities is its reliance on energy imports,’ says Ryan Hass, an analyst with The Brookings Institution in Washington.
Taiwan’s utter dependence on energy imports should inspire frantic action by the island democracy’s leaders. For all the billions of dollars Taipei spends on warplanes, warships, tanks, missiles and drones, this weaponry might matter for little if Beijing chooses to strangle its rival by way of blockade rather than delivering a military body blow.
It’s all but impossible for Taiwan to achieve energy independence in the timeframe—a few years to a decade—in which many observers see a high risk of China moving against the island. But greater energy resilience, especially expanded gas storage, could buy more time for Taiwan to solicit the diplomatic or military intervention that might save its 24 million people from Chinese subjugation.
When the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. gamed out possible Chinese approaches to a blockade of Taiwan, it consistently arrived at the same startling conclusion. ‘Natural gas ran out in about 10 days,’ CSIS analysts Mark Cancian, Matthew Cancian and Eric Heginbotham wrote. ‘Taiwan has substantial inventories of coal and oil, but eventually these ran out also if not resupplied (at seven weeks and 20 weeks, respectively).’
Factories would go idle. Hospitals would switch to generators and then candlelight. Transportation would grind to a halt. Routine communication would fail. Military capabilities would erode, too, as bases also switched to generators drawing on limited reserves of gasoline and diesel.
Taiwan can’t just drill deeper for domestic oil and gas as the United States could, switch on idle nuclear reactors as France could nor fall back on newly installed wind and solar as, say, Denmark could. Realistically, Taiwan will continue to import almost all of its energy for the foreseeable future. Pretending otherwise would merely invite swifter defeat.
Policymakers in Taipei can and must do something, however. They can start by looking underground—at the country’s extensive network of deep underground caverns, many of which are suitable for conversion to gas storage.
‘Over the longer term, Taiwan likely will need to pursue an all-of-the-above strategy for expanding domestic energy production, including nuclear and renewables,’ Hass says. But, ‘in the short term, Taiwan needs to build insulation against supply shocks by expanding stockpiles.’
Taiwan sits atop caverns that, with major investment and intensive effort, could hold a potentially blockade-busting reserve of natural gas. Tsuang Ben-jei, a professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering at National Chung Hsing University, reminded Taiwan’s Central News Agency that state-run oil refiner CPC Corporation already operated an underground storage facility that could stash a 26-day supply of gas. Converting all suitable caverns for gas storage could swell Taiwan’s reserve to an impressive 600-day supply, Tsuang said.
A massive increase in gas storage would buy Taiwan time to make greater investments in geothermal, solar and wind power, which currently meet just 10 percent of the island’s energy needs.
James Liao, president of Academia Sinica—Taiwan’s national academy in Taipei—stresses that a pivot to renewables won’t be easy. Liao recently told an audience at Stanford University that Taiwan’s small size, high population density and rugged terrain impeded any expansion of current wind and solar technologies
Instead, Academia Sinica researchers are focusing on five technologies, Liao said: methane pyrolysis, geothermal energy, marine current technology, high-efficiency solar cells and biofuels including algae-based fuels. But no one expects these technologies to be scalable anytime soon—and certainly not in time to meet the near-term threat from a possible Chinese blockade.
Nuclear power once offered hope. As recently as 1985, Taiwan generated most of its electricity at three nuclear power plants. But the last shuttered in May after its license expired—and an August referendum that would’ve reactivated it failed when too few voters participated to meet the legal threshold for passage.
The demise of nuclear power in Taiwan and the uphill climb facing cutting-edge renewables means that, for now, adding gas storage—a lot of it, fast—represents the island’s best chance of outlasting a Chinese blockade.
It could cost billions of dollars. But the cost of doing nothing, Hass warned, is that ‘Beijing will control the on/off switch for Taiwan’s society and economy.’