A thousand wind turbines will be built off the coast of Changhua, forcing fishermen to withdraw entirely and transition

Offshore wind power and fisheries have clashed repeatedly, with controversies arising frequently. Changhua, located at the midpoint of the west coast, is currently the county and city with the largest offshore wind farm area, and in the future more than a thousand wind turbines will be planted across its waters. Dense wind turbines plus shipping lanes will cut the waters off Changhua into fragments, leaving almost no complete sea area for fishermen to operate in. Coastal fishermen will be unable to continue fishing. Where are they to go?

The severe challenges facing Changhua's fishermen may be a microcosm of Taiwan's western coastal and offshore fisheries. Compensation from wind power to fisheries is only a one-time economic remedy, and fishermen's subsequent livelihoods remain unresolved. After years of protests and conflict, the Changhua District Fishermen's Association proposed a "reconciliation and coexistence" plan in 2019, hoping that wind power developers would provide funding and that industry, government and academia would establish a platform to promote "offshore ranching," converting capture fisheries into offshore aquaculture and seeking the possibility of coexistence between fisheries and wind turbines.

Chen Chu-tsan, director-general of the Changhua District Fishermen's Association, admitted frankly, "This plan carries enormous pressure and enormous risk, but for the sustainability of Changhua's fisheries and the livelihoods of fishermen, we must give it a try. Otherwise, Changhua's fisheries will face a matter of life and death." (To read the following article, please click here)

The waters off Changhua will be packed with wind turbines, as seven operators enter the battlefield

Domestic offshore wind power promotion is carried out in three stages: demonstration incentives, potential sites, and block development. According to the "Directions for Applications for Offshore Wind Power Planned Site Selection" announced in July 2015, among the 36 potential sites planned in the second stage, 21 are wind farm sites off the coast of Changhua, with an initial plan for 2,500 sq km of sea area, taking up more than half of the nation's potential site range.

Even though in 2017 the Maritime and Port Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications coordinated with the Bureau of Energy on the grounds of "navigation safety" to exclude potential sites No. 20 to 25 in the north-south shipping lanes, nearly 2,000 sq km of sea area off the coast of Changhua was still designated as wind farm sites.

The land area of Changhua County is only 1,174 sq km, while the offshore wind farm area is nearly twice the size of Changhua, equivalent to 7 Taipei Cities and 100 times Sun Moon Lake, the nation's largest natural lake. As a contested strategic location, the waters off Changhua are developed in two stages and occupied by 7 operators, whose importance goes without saying.

If the north-south shipping lanes designated by the Maritime and Port Bureau, the direct cross-strait shipping lane between the two sides of Taichung Port, and the Formosa Plastics Sixth Naphtha Cracker Complex shipping lane on the south side are also included (see attached map), the waters off Changhua have been almost entirely cut up by wind farms and shipping lanes, leaving fishermen only a narrow strip of about 9-10 km along the coast for fishing.

FishFisheries expert: The planning of potential sites gave no consideration at all to fisheries, and the entire offshore area was ceded to wind power developers

So how exactly were the wind farm sites off the coast of Changhua planned? Ou Ching-hsien, a professor in the Department of Environmental Biology and Fisheries Science at National Taiwan Ocean University who participated in wind power development as a fisheries expert, revealed that at the beginning of planning there was no consideration at all of fisheries or fishermen, and even the Fisheries Agency was only informed after site selection planning had begun.

"At the time, the Bureau of Energy of the Ministry of Economic Affairs asked the Industrial Technology Research Institute to do the wind farm planning for all of Taiwan, and only then did the Fisheries Agency find out. ITRI's planning only considered the technical side, excluding areas according to water depth, currents, wind farms, terrain, and relevant regulations, but for the parts related to fisheries, it did not ask local fishermen or fishermen's associations at all, and it was announced just like that." He stated.

Looking through the environmental impact assessment documents, the important basis for the Bureau of Energy's designation of potential sites in the second stage was the exclusion method, excluding all prohibited and restricted areas under relevant regulations, such as conservation reef zones, port areas and artificial fishing reefs, artillery firing zones, wetlands, and important habitats of the white dolphin. After excluding these sensitive locations, almost all of the sea area extending outward off Changhua was assigned to wind power developers.

Ou Ching-hsien believes that Changhua is an extreme case in the wind power development process, with almost the entire offshore area available for operation filled with wind turbines, traditional fishing grounds cut into very fragmentary pieces, and fishermen's living space compressed to the limit.

One wind turbine per sq km, leaving Changhua fishermen with nowhere to work