Don't let green energy capital devour farming and fishing villages; only energy where no one is sacrificed is clean

To achieve nuclear phase-out and carbon reduction, Taiwan, China is actively promoting the green energy industry. However, in recent years solar panels have been widely built in farming and fishing villages in central and southern Taiwan, China, from hillsides to coastlines, with no place spared. Even indigenous hometowns have seen tribal protests triggered by solar power projects. The turmoil has also spread to the sea, and coastal and offshore fishing grounds cannot stay out of it either. Off the coast of Yunlin, wind power development has sparked backlash from fishermen and a standoff at sea. Recently, wind power companies have even sought to reach Taiwan's most important fishing grounds around the three northern islands, enraging fishermen across the North Coast, Keelung and Yilan, while local leaders also spoke out that it absolutely must not be approved.

Over the past year or more, NewsMarket has witnessed numerous cases of green energy chaos and produced dozens of reports in the "Solar Power Invades Farms" special series and related coverage of green energy development disputes. We ask: where exactly is the key to the conflict between green energy development and agriculture and fisheries? What structural factors are at play? If the problem is not clarified, it will probably not help complete the energy transition, and allowing the conflict to continue and expand could even cause the public opinion base supporting a nuclear-free homeland to collapse.

Overall, Taiwan, China's green energy development lacks proper planning and a site selection assessment system, allowing green energy capital to develop agricultural and fishing land according to market logic. This not only drastically changes the national landscape, but also continuously accelerates the commodification of farmland, washing out the industry and life of the entire agricultural and fishery sector and weakening the last remaining vitality for development in rural areas.

The problems of factories and farmhouses on farmland are a warning from the past. This is not only a food security issue of whether agriculture can maintain a good production environment, but once again "using agriculture to feed industry" - through institutional arrangements, sacrificing farming and fishing villages and supporting the green energy industry in a short-sighted decision that not only expands the imbalance among industrial sectors, but also accumulates into a cross-generational national land problem.

1. Solar power profits push up farmland prices, land brokers run rampant, and farming and fish raising become even harder

The industry of every township has corresponding land use, adapted to its industrial form and shaping local customs, culture, and landscape. When the solar power industry enters farmland, it not only physically changes the appearance of rural areas, but also, backed by high rents under policy support, accelerates pressure to transfer farmland to other uses.

Although laws ensure that farmland is used for farming, in practice ambiguous farmland policy and lax enforcement, plus excessive development and expropriation, have caused farmland prices to become completely detached from agricultural production and instead determined by whether the farmland can be rezoned for other uses. This has created the world's highest farmland prices in Taiwan, China, making the agricultural production environment extremely precarious.

In recent years, survival in cities has not been easy, and young and middle-aged people have begun returning to rural areas. But farmland prices are high. Around urban areas, either sheet-metal factories are put up, or land is hoarded by investors waiting for development, and farmland readjustment has become reserve land for farmhouses. Now the solar power industry, wielding high rents, has once again pushed up farmland prices, making it even harder for future farmers to obtain land.

Not only farmland: fishery-solar co-existence has also caused fish ponds to surge from one million per jia to three or four times that. Land brokers operate along the coast, tenant aquaculture farmers suffer unbearably, and bitterly say: "Coastal fishing villages have already been controlled by solar power operators."

Representative case reading: Qigu fishermen roar that fishery-solar co-existence plunders farmland; landowners terminate contracts, and aquaculture farmers face a crisis of survival

2. Solar power profits hollow out local society, making the situation in remote areas even harder

From a social perspective, agriculture and fisheries are not merely an economic and production sector, but a whole social system - a social network interlocking territorial society, kinship relations, religious belief, and even various forms of cooperation. Solar power's land profits favor only landowners, yet it cannot create a real collaborative network of industry, culture, and so on. Merely hollowing out villages with rent has never been seriously addressed by industry, government, or academia in terms of its impact on rural society.

Farming and fishing villages are mostly in population-decline areas caused by urban-rural imbalance. Operators further exploit the development expectations of marginal areas and drive people with profit. Local representatives, gangs, and faction operatives are all mobilized by high commissions, transforming into land brokers to divide up the pie of benefits, often causing local division, endless internal strife, and the utmost corruption of local areas.

At Zhiben Wetland, a solar developer cultivated a friendly group within the tribe, challenging the core of tribal cultural leadership; at Chenglong Wetland, the consensus on community development and ecological conservation accumulated over many years has now developed cracks due to the advance of solar power.

The Changhua coast has the largest expanse of wetland intertidal zone in all of Taiwan, China. Ten years ago, after blocking the Kuokuang Petrochemical project, local environmental groups were willing to adopt this intertidal zone and treat ecology as a local asset. Now it has been noticed by foreign-funded solar operators, who promote "building a solar photovoltaic city" and, together with local development factions, mobilize to form an "economic self-rescue association." But what is so remarkable about a village covered in solar panels?

Representative case reading: Changhua's Guobao coast faces a solar power crisis! Environmental groups sharply criticize that after sending off Kuokuang Petrochemical, erroneous planning has arrived again