Industrial zones unwilling to install green energy, so the state only dares to pressure farming and fishing villages? Rooftop solar installed on less than 20% of manufacturing buildings

Ground-mounted solar keeps sparking controversy, and at the end of November the Executive Yuan announced it would prioritize rooftop solar, including rooftops in industrial parks. Using aerial imagery and GIS overlays, civil society environmental groups found that less than 20% of industrial parks, science parks and export processing zones across Taiwan, China have solar installed. Tsai Hui-hsun, director of the Citizen of the Earth Foundation, said industrial park rooftops currently have only 803 MW of solar installed, but aerial photography shows most rooftops are completely bare, and a rough estimate puts the rooftop solar potential of industrial parks at at least 5000 MW.

Environmental groups called on the government to act: rooftop solar is the renewable energy with the smallest environmental impact, and the manufacturing sector ranks first nationwide in both electricity consumption and carbon emissions, so the Executive Yuan should raise the 2025 rooftop solar target, promptly publish the list of major electricity users, increase the rooftop solar installation rate, and require existing factory buildings to follow suit.

Manufacturing ranks first nationwide in electricity consumption and carbon emissions, yet less than 20% of rooftops have solar installed

In late November, Executive Yuan Deputy Premier Shen Jong-chin announced eight priority zones for solar development, including rooftops in industrial parks. A month later, civil society environmental groups found that less than 20% of industrial park rooftops had solar installed, showing that the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs had done a seriously inadequate inventory of existing industrial parks, science parks and export processing zones.

Manufacturing accounts for 52% of carbon emissions and more than 56% of electricity consumption, making it the nation's top sector on both counts. Citizen of the Earth Foundation chief executive Tsai Chung-yueh said that as of yesterday, 127 countries had been studying net-zero carbon emissions, and this year they had also seen domestic industry leader TSMC declare that its future products would be made entirely with green electricity. Green electricity has gone from being an environmental option in the past to the economic development trend of the future. "Since manufacturing is a major electricity user, it should generate its own power for its own use."

Using aerial imagery of industrial parks and Google satellite maps, the Citizen of the Earth Foundation presented the current state of rooftop solar installation in domestic industrial parks, showing that whether in industrial parks directly managed by the central or local governments or in science parks under the Ministry of Science and Technology, more than 80% of buildings still have no solar installed.