From Ukraine to Taiwan: Experts Reveal How Blockade Will Wipe Out Fuel Reserves in Weeks

Experts from Ukraine, Japan, and the United States convened in Taipei to stress that Taiwan's near-total dependence on imported energy makes its power grid a primary strategic target — and that the window to fix it is now.

Taiwan's energy infrastructure would face a critical supply crunch within weeks of a naval blockade, according to war-game analysis and expert testimony presented at an international conference in Taipei on June 6. Specialists from Ukraine, Japan, and the United States told the Supply Chain Resilience Strategy International Summit — hosted by the Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology Foundation (DSET) — that decentralizing Taiwan's power grid and strengthening allied shipping arrangements are not optional contingencies but urgent strategic imperatives.

The scenario is not hypothetical. The People's Liberation Army has conducted successive large-scale encirclement exercises around Taiwan since 2022, when then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit triggered a wave of military drills. Subsequent exercises in May and October 2024, and again in December 2025, have each extended closer to Taiwan's coastline and covered wider operational areas, according to a briefing by Tsaiying Lu, Director of DSET's Energy Security and Climate Resilience Program, who moderated the session.

Compounding the threat is Taiwan's position astride one of the world's busiest sea lanes. The Taiwan Strait handles roughly 13 percent of global maritime trade by value. A blockade, DSET's analysis found, would directly affect 73 percent of vessels transiting the area, while another 21 percent would be forced to reroute — adding an average of 252 kilometers to their journeys. The most severe impact would fall on the Japan-to-Guangdong shipping corridor, where diversion costs would add 632 kilometers. During the PLA's "Justice Mission 2025" exercises, two LNG tankers were disrupted, with the additional shipping fees and fuel costs reaching approximately US$220,000 — a small but telling signal of what a full blockade would impose.

The energy calculus is stark. Taiwan generates 83 percent of its electricity from imported fuels — coal (35.4 percent) and LNG (47.8 percent) accounting for the overwhelming share. Its domestic energy self-sufficiency rate stands at just 4.2 percent. Mark Cancian, a retired U.S. Marine Corps Reserve colonel and senior adviser in the Defense and Security Department at CSIS, presented findings from the think tank's war-game report Lights Out, which modeled a blockade scenario in detail. In the first two weeks — even under normal peacetime consumption — Taiwan's total usable energy supply would fall by roughly one-third as strategic reserves declined. By approximately the ninth week, coal stockpiles would be exhausted, leaving Taiwan dependent solely on whatever it could produce domestically.

Cancian argued that the core challenge is not storage policy alone — it is ensuring vessels are willing and able to run through a contested strait. Under conflict conditions, commercial shipping companies will not accept that risk through market incentives alone. The vessels most likely to enter Taiwan's ports would be those flying the U.S. flag or the flags of specific allied nations, making them potential targets for Chinese attack.

To address both the economic and operational barriers, Cancian pointed to two existing U.S. mechanisms: the Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement (VISA), which allows the government to requisition commercial vessels for military resupply missions in wartime, and the Tanker Security Program (TSP), a parallel arrangement specific to oil tankers. Both frameworks could be adapted for Taiwan contingencies, he said, with government-backed insurance covering vessel damage or loss. He also suggested Taiwan consider acquiring retiring tankers, maintaining them at minimal cost in serviceable condition for emergency energy or cargo transport. For crew recruitment in high-risk voyages, he proposed supplementary hazard pay — on the order of US$10,000 per sailor per transit.

Drawing on the U.S.-Iran standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, Cancian noted that such stalemates are costly and protracted but not permanent: when both sides establish effective counter-blockades and negotiations stall, the logic of attrition eventually compels resolution. "Things that cannot go on forever, don't," his slide read — a reminder that even the most durable blockade scenarios carry their own expiration date, at significant cost to all parties.

Admiral Tomohisa Takei (Ret.), the 32nd Chief of Staff of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, framed Taiwan's predicament through the lens of what he called a "twin strategic vulnerability" shared by Taiwan and Japan. Both are island economies almost entirely dependent on seaborne imports for food and energy. Japan's food self-sufficiency stands at 38 percent (2024) and its energy self-sufficiency at 16.4 percent, with 68 percent of electricity derived from imported fuels — coal (29 percent), LNG (32 percent), and oil (7 percent). Taiwan's figures are more precarious: food self-sufficiency at 30.3 percent (2023) and energy self-sufficiency at a mere 4.2 percent, with 83 percent of power generation dependent on imported coal and LNG.

"An adversary will attack strategic vulnerabilities in accordance with the principles of military strategy," Admiral Takei said. "Once China attempts to exert strategic pressure on Taiwan and Japan, these twin vulnerabilities will naturally become the targets." He stressed that the security of sea lines of communication would heavily influence the outcome of any Taiwan Strait crisis.

Asked how Japan could practically help Taiwan secure maritime supply routes in a conflict, Admiral Takei was candid about the legal and political obstacles. Under the laws of naval warfare, any resupply vessel operating in support of Taiwan during an active conflict would be a legitimate military target, meaning that Japan dispatching government supply ships could draw Japan directly into the war. "This should be discussed before we reach that situation," he said. "And yet this conversation has never taken place between Taiwan and Japan."

The most operationally detailed testimony came from Anton Antonenko, co-founder and vice president of Dixi Group, a Ukrainian energy think tank. Speaking from four years of wartime experience, Antonenko walked through six distinct phases of Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure — from the initial strikes on thermal generation and fuel logistics in early 2022, through the systematic destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in 2023, to the expanded drone campaign targeting gas infrastructure in 2025 and the compound winter attacks of late 2025 and early 2026.

The pattern that emerged, Antonenko said, pointed to a single overriding lesson: concentrated infrastructure is a liability. The higher a system's reliance on a single large generating station, the more catastrophic a successful strike becomes — not just for that facility, but for the entire regional supply chain dependent on it. Long transmission corridors from centralized plants create additional chokepoints.

His five-point framework for reform translates directly to Taiwan's situation. First, prioritize distributed generation for critical loads — hospitals, water utilities, municipal communications — reducing single points of failure. Second, embrace modularity and scalability: deploy small-scale, rapidly deployable generation units (gas turbines, solar-plus-storage combinations) that can compensate quickly when large units go offline. Third, scale up distributed gas-fired generation as a resilience asset. Fourth, pursue regional self-sufficiency, planning around how much load each area can sustain independently under transmission constraints. Fifth, strengthen grid connectivity, because generation capacity is useless if the network cannot deliver power to consumers.

"Even if you have enough generation capacity, but you have no available grid or cannot deliver power through it, that capacity means nothing," Antonenko said. A blackout, he added, triggers what he called a "multiple crisis" — immediately cascading into water supply failures, communications outages, and a cascade of secondary emergencies.

He was blunt about Ukraine's own failures. "If we could go back, we would have planned the entire system with resilience by design — more distributed generation, larger stockpiles of critical components and spare parts, and a smarter grid capable of rapid switching and rerouting." Regulatory frameworks, he emphasized, must be prepared in advance so that emergency measures can be activated immediately when needed.

Wu Chin-chung, Vice President of Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), presented the utility's current resilience posture and acknowledged that the 2021 and 2022 blackout incidents were the catalyst for a structural shift away from centralized grid management.

Taipower's strategy rests on seven pillars. The first involves direct power supply from five major generating plants to seven industrial technology parks, reserving the main transmission grid for residential and general commercial consumers. The second is building microgrids at resilience anchor sites — Taiwan's energy authority currently plans approximately 160 such microgrids, combining solar panels, diesel generators, and energy storage to enable local self-sufficiency.

The third pillar is hardening critical infrastructure physically, including round-the-clock electronic surveillance, on-site security personnel, anti-drone warning systems, and dual redundancy in regional grid segments so that a successful attack on one node does not bring down the broader area. The fourth is a three-stage blackout recovery protocol: when central dispatch (CDCC) remains functional, it executes load-shedding; when CDCC fails, regional dispatch centers (ADCC) take over, conducting regular black-start drills; and when a wider cascade occurs, local distribution dispatch centers (DDCC) manage independent supply from available resources within their zones.

The fifth and sixth pillars cover regional grid interconnection under emergency conditions and rapid repair and restoration capacity. The seventh is cybersecurity — a domain Wu addressed with unusual directness. Taipower faces an average of 30,000 cyberattacks per day, he said, with surges during politically sensitive periods: during Pelosi's 2022 visit, the company sustained more than three million cyberattacks over three days. Taiwan has received support from the United States and the United Kingdom on both defensive technologies and threat intelligence sharing, including joint tabletop exercises, Wu said.

As of 2025, Taipower's total installed capacity stands at 60.07 GW, with annual power procurement reaching 258.4 billion kWh. Taiwan's renewable and storage capacity reached 24.5 GW as of April 2026 — comprising 15.34 GW of solar, 5.02 GW of wind, 2.12 GW of hydro, and 2.02 GW of battery storage. On the fuel reserve side, coal stockpiles currently stand at approximately 40 days — above the statutory minimum of 30 days under the Energy Management Act. LNG reserves exceed 12 days, above the 2026 standard of 11 days.

To prepare for scenarios beyond normal reserve thresholds, Taipower has converted several coal-fired units that were retired on environmental grounds into emergency standby capacity, subjecting them to regular maintenance and test-run cycles. These include the Dalin Unit 5 gas unit in Kaohsiung's Siaogang District and the Hsinta power plant's coal units 1 through 4. Private-sector backup generators provide an additional layer of supply.

The Taiwan Strait carries roughly 13 percent of global maritime trade, and Taiwan itself generates 83 percent of its electricity from imported fuels — leaving it with almost no buffer once supply lines are severed. What the experts gathered in Taipei made clear is that grid resilience is not a secondary concern to be addressed after military preparedness; it is military preparedness. A blockade that darkens cities, shuts down water systems, and severs communications within weeks achieves strategic paralysis without a single missile striking a military target. Ukraine rebuilt its grid under live drone strikes. Taiwan still has the advantage of acting before the crisis arrives — but the PLA's encirclement exercises have grown larger and closer with each iteration, and that window is narrowing. Deployment at scale, and urgently, is what the situation demands. （Related： Beyond Chips: Why AI Diffusion is the Next Great Geopolitical Battlefield ｜ Latest ）