Predecessor Leaves President Lai with Green Energy Mess
United Daily News Editorial, August 27, 2025
After the second major recall failure, former President Tsai Ing-wen went to the presidential residence to offer comfort to President Lai Ching-te. At first glance, the scene seemed warm. But beneath the surface, there was more at play. The recall turned into a nightmare largely because of President Lai’s ignorance, gullibility, and overconfidence, leading to self-inflicted humiliation. Meanwhile, the strong pro-nuclear backlash seen in the referendum on the Third Nuclear Power Plant was a consequence left over from the Tsai administration. On energy issues, Tsai relies on President Lai to clean up the mess. In this regard, the two are bound by a shared fate.
The day after Tsai encouraged President Lai, Cheng Yi-lin, a favorite of the former president and former deputy director of the Green Energy Industry Promotion Center, Ministry of Economic Affairs, was raided by prosecutors for taking bribes from companies under the guise of promoting green power, with even his parents implicated. At just 28, Cheng became deputy director responsible for wind power development. He later joined a foreign company involved in wind power, then returned to head the Taiwan Power Company’s electricity trading platform “Taiwan Power Trading.” Moving back and forth between official and business roles, Cheng enjoyed privileged treatment, freely revolving through the door of power, and ultimately became embroiled in corruption.
On the same day, former Speaker Shen Tsung-lung of the Yunlin County Council was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for accepting over NT$20 million (about US$653,000) in bribes in a wind power case, helping the foreign company obtain development permits. Several other councilors and foreign executives were also convicted in the same case. Also that day, cleanup work was still dragging on at a solar power facility in Chiayi’s detention basin, which had been heavily damaged by Typhoon Danas. Minister of Environment Peng Chi-min issued yet another warning: if operators failed to fulfill their cleanup obligations, the government would take over the task. In other words, the private sector’s mess would become the government’s burden.
That so many scandals tied to wind and solar power surfaced in just one day shows how far Taiwan’s green energy system has gone off track. Over the past year, corruption cases related to green energy have emerged one after another: illegalities in the permit process, official graft, destruction of forests and environments, and collusion between politicians and businessmen. All these stem from flawed systems and poor governance. For eight years, the Tsai administration portrayed green energy as Taiwan’s new savior, meant to replace the “evil” of nuclear power and build a nuclear-free homeland. Eight years later, not only has renewable generation fallen short of targets, but high feed-in tariffs have drained Taipower’s finances, while Taiwan’s natural environment and official integrity have been compromised. Although the referendum on restarting the Third Nuclear Power Plant did not pass, 75 percent of voters cast approval ballots—because people are fed up with lies from officials, disgusted by corruption in green power, and tired of the pollution from thermal power.
President Lai has yet to figure out how to adjust his energy policy. On the night of August 23, responding to the nuclear referendum, he said that if future technology becomes safer, nuclear waste is reduced, and social acceptance is higher, the government “will not rule out advanced nuclear power.” This statement was less about setting conditions for restarting existing nuclear plants, and more about signaling his preference for adopting developing “small modular reactors” (SMRs) as the key to breaking the spell of the “nuclear-free homeland.”
However, if President Lai thinks his energy challenge lies only in breaking that spell, then he underestimates the problem. The “nuclear-free homeland” is only one of the many energy messes that Tsai left him. The bigger issue is that after eight years of misguided energy policies, Taiwan’s electricity supply has grown increasingly unstable, prices have risen, and scandals have multiplied. President Lai sees SMRs mainly as a bargaining chip in procurement negotiations with the United States. But SMR technology is estimated to require another five years before maturity, and no small nuclear plant is yet in commercial operation worldwide. Given Taiwan’s growing demand and shortage of electricity, it cannot afford to wait five years before considering deployment. Moreover, given the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) decades of instilling anti-nuclear sentiment, the process of securing land and passing environmental assessments for a new nuclear facility could drag on for years. Can industry and society afford to wait?
In sum, while small nuclear plants may be part of Taiwan’s power solution, in terms of timeliness, ignoring the option of restarting existing facilities like the Third Nuclear Power Plant is simply insufficient. Last year, during his presidential campaign, Lai and Tsai co-starred in a short video “On the Road” symbolizing the handover of political leadership. As for the energy mess Tsai failed to properly hand over, President Lai will have to clean it up himself, piece by piece.