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Jul 23, 10:12
Taiwan relaxes carbon fee rules for first-time regulated high emitters
Taiwan's Ministry of Environment has proposed changes to its carbon fee regulations that would give first-time regulated high emitters more time to prepare compliance plans and allow some firms to use early project credits against carbon fees. The revisions come as the island's carbon pricing system begins taking effect and businesses adjust to new reporting, verification and payment requirements.

China is dismantling the tax shelter that helped build the world's largest battery industry, and the move looks less like a one-off revenue measure than the opening of a broad campaign to force consolidation across its clean-energy supply chains — with consequences that reach from Chinese carmakers to global energy-storage buyers.

Taiwan's semiconductor supply chain is facing mounting pressure to secure enough green electricity as Apple and Google push suppliers to meet net-zero requirements. The strain is rippling from end customers to foundries such as TSMC and then through upstream and downstream vendors, raising fresh concerns over the island's ability to provide affordable and sufficient clean power.
Taiwan lawmakers and Pegatron chairman Tung Tzu-hsien are stepping up calls for nuclear power to strengthen the island's energy resilience, while Academia Sinica said it currently lacks an in-house nuclear power research program but remains open to working with outside research teams.
South Korea's plan to develop a semiconductor cluster in the Honam region (Jeolla Province) is facing mounting scrutiny over whether the area can support the enormous energy and infrastructure requirements of advanced memory manufacturing.
As climate change fuels increasingly severe heat waves, Taiwan is stepping up efforts to combat heat-related illness by integrating artificial intelligence (AI), IoT sensors and social welfare services into a smart heat protection network to better protect vulnerable residents.
China's solar industry is still trapped in a painful shakeout after three straight years of losses across much of the supply chain, according to first-half reports from leading companies. Persistent overcapacity, weak downstream demand, and rising overseas barriers have left the sector under pressure, while investors are watching for signs that similar problems could spread to energy storage and new energy vehicles.
LG Energy Solution plans to establish a sodium-ion battery mother line at its Ochang Energy Plant in South Korea in 2026, seeking to narrow CATL's early commercial lead in energy storage systems.

Oracle's US$165 billion data center project in New Mexico is running into higher-than-expected costs due to local concerns about its energy requirements. This case is one of several showing how the build-out of AI infrastructure in the US has become a politically charged issue at the local level due to worries over electricity needs and other issues.

Taiwan's heavy-electrical and electromechanical industry is entering a new growth phase as demand expands beyond its long-standing reliance on Taiwan Power (Taipower). While Taipower's grid modernization remains the sector's foundation, semiconductor investments, AI data center construction, and overseas infrastructure projects are creating multiple growth drivers. At the same time, project-based business models are making revenue recognition increasingly uneven despite record order backlogs.

Taiwan plans to increase its technology budget by 6.2% in 2027 to accelerate investment in artificial intelligence (AI), space technology and net-zero innovation. The move is also meant to strengthen long-term industrial competitiveness through closer collaboration with the private sector.

As AI ushers in an era in which computing capacity increasingly translates directly into power demand, energy has become the foundational layer of the "five-layer cake" framework outlined by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. While hyperscale cloud providers are accelerating construction of AI data centers, power infrastructure is emerging as a critical factor determining how quickly those facilities can come online.