What are the challenges and opportunities in implementing Taiwan's aquavoltaics policy? A roadmap for achieving symbiosis between small-scale aquaculture and photovoltaics
Introduction
Renewable energy has grown rapidly in recent years and become one of the world's most popular options for power generation (IEA, 2017; IRENA, 2019). Taiwan's government has pledged to increase the percentage of renewable energy to 20% by 2025 while launching energy transition and power market reforms. In 2019, the proportions of installed capacity in Taiwan included coal-fired power plants, which accounted for 36.7% of the total installed capacity; liquefied natural gas-fired power plants, which accounted for 31.4% of the capacity; nuclear power, which accounted for 6.9% of the capacity; oil-fired power plants, which accounted for 5.5% of the capacity; and renewable energy, which accounted for 13.9% of the capacity (photovoltaics accounted for 7.4% and wind power accounted for 1.5%). Therefore, Taiwan faces a long journey to increase the percentage of renewable energy use, and the Taiwan government established a goal to promote photovoltaics (PV); the long-term plan is to reach 20 GW of installed capacity by 2025. To meet the Taiwan government's renewable energy goals, PV systems must be installed over large areas (including 6 GW on rooftops and 14 GW for ground-mounted solar farms), which would occupy approximately 20,000 ha of land (FRI, 2019). However, the limited and fragile land space in Taiwan makes the country unfavourable for enforcing preferential land policies to facilitate PV system development (Geng et al., 2016; Choudhary and Srivastava, 2019). Thus, developing PV systems in multiple functional land spaces has become an important option, and the coexistence of PV systems and original land users is a critical issue for renewable energy development in Taiwan.
Promotion of PV installation subsidies as part of Taiwan's renewable energy policy began in 1999. The Taiwan government instituted the Basic Environment Act in 2002, which provided subsidies for renewable energy equipment and feed-in tariff measures (Huang et al., 2007). To promote energy and environmental sustainability, the Renewable Energy Development Act was passed in 2009, which marked a major milestone for Taiwan. In 2013, the government relaxed restrictions on the installation of renewable energy facilities on agricultural land (including aquaculture farms) and opened up general and specific agricultural zones for the installation and application of green energy equipment, with no limits set on land areas.
Given the limited and fragile land resources in Taiwan, the government began advocating an aquavoltaics policy in January 2019, which states that aquaculture operations using floating PV systems (FPVSs) must install these systems in areas not exceeding 40% of fish farms and that shellfish farms using vertical PV systems should simultaneously culture to 70% of the original output level. Due to the pressure of the renewable energy development target and the challenges faced by PV agriculture, the Taiwan government hopes to integrate smart technologies into aquaculture practices without compromising the original aquaculture industry and thereby achieve a win-win situation, namely, simultaneous revitalization of the economies of fishing communities and sustained development of renewable energy (FRI, 2019). This policy has helped achieve renewable energy targets and provides new income sources for small-scale aquaculture farmers and fishing communities. Regarding the feasibility of using renewable energy in aquaculture, Ioakeimidis et al. (2013) indicated that this combination is economically feasible, provided that government support or corporate investment is obtained. Therefore, symbiosis between farmers and PV systems plays a critical role in promoting renewable energy policies in Taiwan. Nevertheless, farmers remain concerned about the environmental impact of PV facilities (Moore-O’Leary et al., 2018; Walston et al., 2016), PV repair and maintenance problems (Cross and Murray, 2018; Pringle et al., 2017; Xu et al., 2018), reduced production output and output value (Dinesh and Pearce, 2016; Marrou et al., 2013), increased land or rental prices (Franziska et al., 2016; Geng et al., 2016; Thapar et al., 2017), potential damage to farmers' right to work (Groh and Möllendorff, 2020; Pringle et al., 2017), long contract periods (Cucchiella et al., 2015; Xu et al., 2018), and unknown mechanisms for solar panel recycling (Cross and Murray, 2018; Weckend et al., 2016), among other risk management mechanisms. Because of these concerns, farmers have reservations regarding the aquavoltaics policy, with some favourably anticipating its outcome while others are protesting against it. In terms of the living environment, Möllendorff and Welsch (2017) indicated that PV systems negatively influence the quality of life of neighbouring community residents. Bertsch et al. (2017), when describing experiences in the EU, showed that citizens may object to the construction of new energy infrastructure in their localities. Welsch (2016) indicated that renewable energy plants also face issues of public acceptance in the affected locales. Furthermore, several aquaculture sites (e.g., Qigu district in Tainan city) have been associated with issues concerning the conservation of habitats for aquatic birds (e.g., the black-faced spoonbill; Platalea minor), which has caused conservationists to express concern over the impact of PV systems on migration routes and foraging behaviours of aquatic birds and the risk of collision (Kagan et al., 2014; Lovich and Ennen, 2011). Several studies have explored the effects of solar power facilities on aquaculture and the surrounding environments and have discussed issues relevant to synergies (Bakhiyi et al., 2014; Pringle et al., 2017).
In previous studies that have discussed the application or combination of PVs with agriculture or farmers, Pringle et al. (2017) investigated the potential of hybrid floatovoltaic-aquaculture synergistic applications for improving the sustainability of the food-energy-water nexus and found that the primary motivation for combining electrical energy generation with aquaculture is to promote the dual use of water, which has had historically high unused potential. Geng et al. (2020) indicated that FPV does not need to be fixed on the water bottom, so as long as solar energy resources are abundant, all aquaculture industries can adopt fishing photovoltaic hybrid projects (FPHP), and the country can obtain energy and food in a cleaner way and thereby create a more sustainable future. Cucchiella et al. (2015), Granataa et al. (2014) and Weckend et al. (2016) investigated how to reduce financial and social environment costs during the life cycle of PV facilities (e.g., repair and maintenance of damaged equipment and recycling mechanisms). Campoccia et al. (2014) and García-Alvarez and Mariz-Pérez (2012) stressed that renewable energy policies can be supported by stable government policies that are related to special electricity purchase prices. Thapar et al. (2017) identified that community members can provide their land in lieu of renewable energy equity participation, which not only can increase land income but also decrease energy generation costs. Trapani (2014) also revealed the significant positive effect of FPV panels on land values. Nagananthini et al. (2020) found that installing FPV panels in seas or lakes can reduce the demand for land. Bakhiyi et al. (2014) found that potentially toxic materials can be released during the life cycle of PV systems, and consistent actions should be taken to address potential ecological and environmental risks. Aman et al. (2015) indicated that PV systems have safety, health, and environmental impacts. Lai et al. (2019) reported that PV systems affect the quality of life of residents in neighbouring communities. Furthermore, Heaslip et al. (2016), Karl (2017) and van der Schoor (2015) asserted that sustainable development of renewable energy requires considerations of community engagement, local awareness, and the importance of local networks.
Taiwan has a long history of aquaculture development. From the early 1990s, in recognition of the importance of protecting the ecological environment and maintaining sound aquaculture management, aquaculture growth shifted to a focus on quality and ecological concerns (Chen and Qiu, 2014). Given the various unfavourable factors that the aquaculture industry is likely to encounter and a lack of stakeholder consensus on policies and implementation, the cognitive differences between stakeholders may generate unfavourable factors for promoting aquavoltaics policy. However, installation of PV facilities as part of aquaculture is likely to engender conflicts between landowners and land users. For example, when farmers rent their fish farms to others or the original landowners of fish farms refuse to lease their lands for aquaculture use and only consider the benefits of PV facilities and power purchases, the original purpose of fish farming (for agricultural production) is overlooked. Moreover, the aquaculture environment and industry could undergo changes, which could adversely affect the outcomes of aquaculture development (Axinn and Barber, 2003; Parker et al., 2002). Consequently, farm livelihoods and sustainable development of fishing communities would be affected and likely influence and impact the stable supply of staple foods, which would result in conflicts between different stakeholders during policy implementation.
Hence, a key to sustaining renewable energy is establishing a reciprocal and symbiotic relationship among agricultural authorities, farmers, and the general public in the development of aquaculture and promotion of renewable energy. This study analysed stakeholder perspectives on aquavoltaics development, explored the effects of aquavoltaics policies on farmers and the sustainable development of aquaculture, and investigated the experiences of small-scale aquaculture farmers with aquavoltaics development. The results of this study can serve as a basis for energy transition and regional development. Based on the research design and purposes, this paper is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces an overview of the policy, research background, and goal of this research. Section 2 presents the research design, including research areas, questionnaire surveys, and research methods. Section 3 presents the empirical results. Section 4 discusses our research findings and compares them to those of previous studies. Finally, some conclusions and policy implications are presented in Section 5.
Section snippets
Research design
As mentioned previously, implementation of the aquavoltaics policy in Taiwan has resulted in conflicts among farmers, landowners, energy companies, and the government. Issues that concern farmers include not only environmental conservation and production activities in direct relation to production behaviours but also key factors (e.g., aquaculture economy, risk management, and policy factors) that influence sustainable development of the aquaculture industry during promotion of the aquavoltaics
MDM
The first round involved the use of a semi-structured questionnaire, which was developed based on the literature, and interviews were then conducted to gather feedback, which served as the basis for adjusting the second-round questionnaire. After the first-round questionnaires were retrieved, three (E1, E2, and E3) and six (E4, E5, E6, O1, O4, and R1) of the 23 key factors of coastal community sustainable development were merged and revised, as recommended (Appendix C). Based on the
Discussion
In this study, the MDM was useful in helping to determine the key factors in the first phase, and we also identified some important information in this process. Experts and scholars believe that ecological and environmental issues have received more attention, and there is no consensus on the factors that affect the quality of life of residents. In terms of the aquaculture economy, the food self-sufficiency ratio is important in countries with relatively scarce land resources, but there are
Conclusion and policy implications
This study adopted the perspectives of different stakeholders to examine Taiwan's aquavoltaics policy and identified 18 key factors that fell into these five criteria: environmental conservation, production activity, the aquaculture economy, risk management, and policy factors. The findings presented differences in viewpoints, which could help alleviate the anxiety of aquaculture farmers and associations over issues concerning risk management and environmental conservation and strengthen policy
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yao-Jen Hsiao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data curation, Writing – original draft. Jyun-Long Chen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, revising the manuscript. Cheng-Ting Huang: Writing – review & editing, Results discussion, revising manuscript.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our appreciation to the people who provided comments during this study. This study was partially financed by a grant (MOST 107-2410-H-019-027) from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan.
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