Wake up! Wake up!

Taiwan is hungry for green solutions. The problem is that Taiwan prefers to keep dreaming instead of waking up to chase real solutions. Taiwan is sleepwalking right off a cliff.

Everyone is romanticizing electric transportation, but the hard-hitting reality is: where is all the green juice to power it supposed to come from?

Even if you could afford complete fleet replacement with e-vehicles (you could not, by the way), you cannot buy the green electricity to run them. What comes out of your wall socket is dirty and black (LNG, coal) with a tinge of green (13% on a good day). Meanwhile, grid access is already rationed for some areas and serious discussions on restarting Taiwan's aging nuclear plants are alive and well.

Due to the government lack of action, the development of offshore wind power is stalling. Favorable offshore wind farm locations on the windy west coast are running low. Developers are leaving in droves. Plans to introduce floating offshore wind on the deep-water east side are stuck in development hell and limited to cosmetic pilot projects.

So what is left?

PV is all the rage. It is sexy as hell and certainly a necessary part of the solution, but when it comes to providing immediate relief in the short and medium term, solar panels are as practical as a pair of high heels on a mountain hike.

So what is left?

Geothermal. Taiwan has some brewing volcanoes, but not nearly enough to depend on for its basic needs. Current status: ~0.010%. Wake me up when it hits the single digits and I'll start cheering for the volcano.

So what is left?

Renewable fuels, like HVO, which can reduce any diesel engine's carbon footprint by up to 93%. Unfortunately, the fuel market in Taiwan is a virtual state monopoly, run by the same ministry that is in charge of handing out permits for new players on the market. Also: adding even dimes to a fuel bill is a no-no for most enterprises, especially since greenwash is much cheaper. You see where I am going with this.

The big question is: who is holding the hand of sleepwalking Taiwan? Who is whispering soothingly in its ear as it meanders down the path to the edge of the cliff?

No one will like the answer. It is not a single boogieman. It is a myriad of voices, all saying that we do not need to worry; a collective whisper so loud that even the whisperers themselves are starting to believe it: the spineless career civil servants, unwilling to take any action unless mandated from above. Technology dreamers in love with the fantastic metrics and unrealistic expectations of their lab-grown solutions. A national government that thinks they have several decades to solve the problems when they realistically only have half of that - at best.

The true sound of Taiwan is a whisper: do not wake up, do not ask hard questions, do not open your eyes. Just keep on dreaming and everything will be all right.

It is time to wake up and raise some voices.