Preface

As an island country with scarce energy resources, Taiwan is confronting numerous energy challenges due to the rapid pace of global climate change. With the boom in high-tech manufacturing, power supply and demand has become even tighter, making Taiwan’s path to achieving its 2050 net-zero goal more challenging. However, challenges often present opportunities. By developing energy hubs, Taiwan can accelerate its net-zero transition while improving its energy supply resilience.

Looking back, Taiwan has experienced several major power supply emergencies, which have underscored the importance of a diverse and resilient energy supply. In July 2017, a typhoon caused the collapse of a power tower at Hualien’s Heping Power Plant, resulting in about 1.3 million kilowatts of power supply energy being disconnected to the Taipower system. In August of the same year, the natural gas supply disruption at Taoyuan’s Datan Power Plant triggered an island-wide power outage. These events exposed the fragility of Taiwan’s energy system and provided us with an opportunity to rethink our energy strategies.

Turning Challenges into Opportunities by Enhancing Energy Supply Resilience

In the face of these challenges, Taiwan needs to strengthen the resilience of its energy supply at several levels. First, in terms of power transmission, with the massive development of renewable energy, especially offshore wind power, Taiwan needs to expand its grid facilities including submarine cables and onshore booster stations. Second, the development of energy storage technology is crucial to overcome the intermittency of renewable energy. Taiwan has made progress in building energy storage, but still needs to tackle challenges such as high costs and insufficient technological maturity.

New energy conversion technologies, particularly hydrogen electrolysis, are expected to play an important role in future energy systems. As the world moves toward net-zero emissions, the demand for hydrogen and power-to-gas (PtoG) technologies is likely to increase significantly. However, these technologies are in the early stages of development and related industries are still in their infancy. Meanwhile, the development of non-electric grids should not be ignored. How hydrogen can be blended through existing natural gas pipeline networks and delivered to end-users is an issue to explore in the future.

International R&D Projects and Application Cases of Strengthening Energy Supply Resilience

The international community has begun to take action to promote a multi-energy supply framework, among which the energy hub modelis beingwidely used. The NortH­₂ Project in the Netherlands and the Humber H₂ub® Project in the UK are two typical cases that demonstrate how energy hubs can improve the resilience of energy supply and promote the net-zero transition for industries.

Case 1: The NortH₂ Project in the Netherlands

NortH₂ is a consortium for European multinational industrial cooperation launched in 2020. It aims to produce green hydrogen on a large scale, provide green raw materials for adjacent industrial clusters, and meet the demand for green fuel to produce high-temperature heat in industry. A complete green hydrogen supply chain will be formed by building large-scale offshore wind power, hydrogen electrolysis facilities, underground hydrogen storage, and hydrogen pipelines.

This project increases the regions’ energy supply resilience in one way and, in another, facilitates the low-carbon transition of its building and transport industry. For every 1 gigawatt of green hydrogen production capacity, it is estimated that about 900,000 tons of CO₂ emissions can be reduced annually_. This is equivalent to a reduction of 4% of the region’s industrial carbon emissions in 2030, or the emissions of 450,000 vehicles or 250,000 households. The carbon reduction achieved are substantial.

Case 2: The Humber H₂ub® Project in the UK

The UK’sH₂ub® Project is a net-zero transition initiative led by the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership. The project integrates a variety of low and zero carbon energy technologies, including biomass with carbon capture and storage (Bio-CCS), 100% hydrogen-fired power plants, hydrogen production with CCS, and hydrogen electrolysis plants. Through the installation of hydrogen storage stations and pipelines, the program aims to provide a stable supply of hydrogen to industries such as steel and petrochemicals, and to diversify energy supply through system integration.

In addition to enhancing energy supply resilience, this project assists the region’s industries in their low carbon transition by integrating low and zero carbon technologies. Benefits include nearly zero carbon electricity generation from Bio-CCS, reduction of CO₂ emissions by 900,000 tons per year from blue hydrogen supply, and reduction of CO₂ emissionsby 80,000 tons per year from CCS technology for refineries in the region.

Hydrogen at the Center of the Energy Hub

For Taiwan’s future, the development of a hydrogen-centered energy hub has multiple implications. In terms of needs, firstly, it can expand the scope of renewable energy applications, not only for power generation, but also as a zero carbon alternative for industrial use. Secondly, electrolytic hydrogen storage can help regulate the intermittency of renewable energy and improve the stability of the energy system. Finally, the integration of energy hubs can meet the diverse energy needs of industries and maximize the efficiency and stability of energy supply and demand.

In terms of benefits, the hydrogen-centered energy hub can provide Taiwan’s industrial sector with a wide range of carbon reduction resources. For example, hydrogen can meet the low-carbon heat and raw material needs of industries such as steel and petrochemicals, helping these carbon-intensive industries achieve deep carbon reduction. It can also alleviate the impact of renewable energy on the energy system and increase the diversity of energy supply through electrolytic hydrogen production. These are of great significance for Taiwan to achieve its net-zero goal by 2050.

Conclusion

As global climate change intensifies, the net-zero transition has become an irreversible trend. To ensure energy supply security and environmental sustainability in Taiwan, energy hubs offer a crucial solutionthat can turn challenges into opportunities, with green hydrogen serving a key driver for these hubs.

Among global practices, Europe has promoted a number of green hydrogen-centered energy hubs to accelerate the penetration of renewable energy across all sectors and assist industrial clusters in their net-zero transition. In Taiwan, we are also actively expanding our renewable energy infrastructure. If we can integrate hydrogen into our energy hubs, we believe that it will help us expand the application of renewable energy in various industries (e.g., steel, petrochemicals, and advanced semiconductors) to reduce carbon emissions.