台灣光電轉型「最小衝突」戰略：情境與土地規模等地選址模式

To mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, the Taiwanese government has laid out a long-term plan to increase the capacity of renewable energy across the country. One of the near-term goals is to develop 20 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity (GWc) by 2025. After the setting of this goal, rapid development plans were made, causing environmental and social land use conflicts. Taiwan's current approach favors industrial-scale solar farms, with little social and environmental considerations. We believe that the integration of more purposeful and targeted environmental planning techniques could help decision-makers reach photovoltaic development goals while reducing negative environmental and social impacts. We utilize a least conflict spatial analysis approach to identify possible photovoltaic development areas. We map the "unused" land from the National Land Use Survey Database and employ three development scenarios representing different levels of environmental protection. Scenario one shows development of all unused land with no environmental considerations. Scenario two shows development of unused land except land identified for protection by zoning and land use definitions, such as ecological conservation zones, national parks, nationally important wetlands etc. Scenario three shows development of unused land except everything from scenario two as well as land that isn't officially protected, but has been identified as supporting natural resources, ecosystems, or socio-economic importance, such as irrigation and drainage land, forest land, salt pan lands, and cemeteries. We calculate development possibilities under each of these scenarios to determine whether Taiwan's photovoltaic goals can be met without sacrificing natural resources. The results show that under a development rate of 70%, scenario one can support 15.5GWc, scenario two can support 10.6GWc, and scenario three can support 9.9 GWc. Scenarios two and three show marginal differences in development potential compared to scenario one. We also found that the size classification of development sites significantly affects the total potential development capacity. For instance, the potential capacity when restricting development to sites above 20 hectares is 7.8GWc less than that when considering all sites greater than 0.5 hectares. This shows that there is more development potential when small-scale photovoltaic developments are pursued. We recommend that decision-makers utilize spatial analysis techniques in energy transition planning, avoid developing areas of critical environmental and social significance, and increase effort into small-scale and community-based photovoltaic development.