Scope 3 emissions are emerging as a major test of corporate management capabilities, requiring companies to move beyond carbon accounting and translate data into measurable supply chain action. Taiwan's Pegatron is tackling the challenge through digital tools, targeted supplier engagement, and collaborative decarbonization initiatives, said Min-hsiang Chen, senior manager at Pegatron's Quality and Sustainability Development Center, at the 2026 Net-Zero Sustainability Summit on November 4.
Taiwan's deep geothermal sector is reporting fresh progress after a 2,049-meter well that reached temperatures of 140 degrees Celsius was completed in a challenging metamorphic rock zone in the eastern county of Taitung. The breakthrough strengthens the case for deep geothermal energy as a valuable baseload renewable power source alongside solar and offshore wind.
With Taiwan's electricity prices poised to rise, large power users set to bear the brunt, and the government planning to broaden the definition of large power users, pairing electricity supply with energy storage has become a global trend. However, as Taiwan's energy storage market faces competition from low-cost lithium battery cells, whether government subsidies can translate into actual profits has become a focus for many local supply chains.
California startup Reflect Orbital plans to reflect sunlight from space onto designated areas of Earth at night, targeting solar power, nighttime search-and-rescue and lighting markets through a "Sunlight as a Service" model. The company aims to deploy up to 50,000 large mirror satellites by 2035, but its first demonstration satellite and recent ground tests have raised concerns over potential light pollution.
LG Energy Solution's third-quarter recovery shows energy storage as a growing earnings driver as the battery maker redirects production toward North American demand. Better factory utilization helped restore operating profit even without manufacturing incentives, although a consolidated net loss and cash outflow show that the recovery remains incomplete.
Geopolitical tensions, volatile crude oil prices, and tightening sustainability requirements are reshaping the global chemical industry, creating new challenges and opportunities for Taiwan's specialty chemicals sector. Against this backdrop, the government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) forecasts that Taiwan's specialty chemicals output will reach NT$185.7 billion (US$5.7 billion) in 2026, up 10.9% from 2025, partly driven by higher oil prices pushing up specialty chemical prices.
China's leading solar manufacturers have reported their third-quarter 2026 financial results, showing signs of improving profitability but continued heavy losses, underscoring the persistence of excess production capacity across the industry.
South Korean energy and engineering companies are positioning themselves for the emerging small modular reactor (SMR) market, with SK Innovation (SKI) seeking to build expertise through US demonstration and early commercial projects before pursuing domestic deployment, while Samsung C&T is focusing on modular construction to shorten project timelines, reduce costs, and accelerate commercialization.
As AI and unmanned systems see wider adoption, the military's reliance on electricity continues to grow, making energy transition critical to maintaining combat capabilities. The South Korean Army made its debut at Smart Energy Plus (SEP) 2026, showcasing microgrids integrating solar power, energy storage systems (ESS), and hydrogen fuel cells, along with hydrogen-powered tactical vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell drones to reduce dependence on external power grids.
The aggressive deployment of infrastructure-scale AI projects is rapidly driving up compute demand as chip architectures continue to scale across an expanding ecosystem of data-center racks. At the same time, sustaining those massive buildouts is pushing one of the industry's most critical bottlenecks beyond raw compute toward power delivery and thermal efficiency.
Doosan Enerbility is strengthening its position in the AI-driven power infrastructure market, backed by 12 gas turbine orders in the US and an expanding nuclear energy portfolio. At Smart Energy Plus (SEP) 2026 in South Korea, the company showcased technologies spanning gas turbines, large nuclear reactors, small modular reactors (SMRs), and offshore wind, highlighting delivery speed, manufacturing capacity, and long-term maintenance as increasingly critical competitive factors.
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