The Ministry of Economic Affairs is preparing to aggressively promote "small hydropower" development — and to this editorial board, it signals that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government has learned nothing. Having spent the past decade inflicting widespread damage on Taiwan's mountains, forests, and wetlands in the name of green energy, the administration now appears ready to turn its attention to the island's rivers and streams.
Earlier this month, the Ministry published its "Small Hydropower Demonstration Incentive Regulations," intended to accelerate decentralized renewable energy development and push up total generation capacity. Under the rules, approved projects are eligible for government subsidies of up to NT$5 million per case, capped at 50% of total project costs. The ministry's motivation is straightforward: its broader renewable energy targets have stalled, and small hydropower is being positioned as a way to boost green electricity numbers.
The regulations define small hydropower as electricity generated by harnessing "existing water flow and head differentials" in irrigation channels, water conduits, or other hydraulic structures — with an installed capacity ceiling of under 20,000 kilowatts. To put the scale in perspective: a 100-kilowatt micro-hydropower installation generates roughly 750,000 kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power approximately 170 households. A 500-kilowatt community-scale facility produces between 800,000 and 1 million kilowatt-hours annually.
Small Hydropower's Output Is Negligible by Comparison
These are, by any measure, modest figures. A single reactor unit at the Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant carries an installed capacity of 985,000 kilowatts and generates roughly 7.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year. A single natural gas turbine at the Datan Power Plant produces between 8 and 10.7 billion kilowatt-hours annually. Against those benchmarks, the hundreds of thousands to low millions of kilowatt-hours that small hydropower installations can offer is a rounding error — barely enough to register in Taiwan's overall energy balance.
Proponents will argue that the cumulative effect matters: many small installations, distributed across the country, can collectively make a meaningful contribution when Taiwan's green electricity supply is tight. That argument is not entirely without merit. But it cannot be evaluated in isolation from the costs.
Hydropower's Ecological Toll Is Well Documented
Water power is frequently classified as a sustainable, renewable energy source — but dam construction and river diversion carry well-documented ecological consequences. Dams destroy riparian habitats, sever migratory routes for fish and other aquatic species, trap sediment that would otherwise replenish downstream coastlines, and can drain or kill the wetland ecosystems that depend on natural river flow.
The international trend has, in fact, moved in the opposite direction. Since the late twentieth century, the United States has removed more than 2,000 obsolete or ecologically damaging dams to restore natural river flow. In Pennsylvania and Washington State, dedicated dam-removal funds have helped recover endangered salmon and trout populations by reopening upstream spawning grounds — producing what biologists have described as a remarkable revival of freshwater ecosystems. In Europe, the 2021 Declaration for Rivers set a target of removing 25,000 kilometers of river barriers by 2030, with the explicit goal of restoring fish migration corridors and wetland systems.
Taiwan is moving in precisely the opposite direction at precisely the wrong moment.
A Decade of Green Energy Has Already Scarred Taiwan's Landscape
The DPP government's renewable energy record since 2016 does not inspire confidence that ecological considerations will constrain this latest push. The pattern has been consistent: generation targets are set, subsidies are deployed, and environmental consequences follow.
Habitats have paid a recurring price. Taoyuan's historically and ecologically significant irrigation ponds — known as *pitang* — were filled in to make way for solar panels. The Aogu Wetland in Chiayi, internationally recognized as a birdwatching destination, was developed for solar generation, drawing criticism from overseas naturalists. Tidal flats in Changhua were slated for photovoltaic coverage, and aquaculture zones in Qigu were converted for large-scale power generation.
Farmland and forest have fared no better. Decades-old lowland reforestation plantations in Pingtung were cleared for solar farms. Prime agricultural land in Chishang and Guantian was covered with solar installations. Hillside land in Kaohsiung — classified as sensitive terrain — was deforested for panels, and floating solar arrays were placed across multiple reservoir surfaces. Among the most egregious examples is the large-scale solar development on hillsides in Kaohsiung's Dashu and Shanlin districts, which inflicted severe damage on watershed management and soil retention.
Across all of these cases, the common thread is the same: generation volume was prioritized over ecological impact, cost-effectiveness, or long-term sustainability.
A Demonstration Phase Is No Guarantee Against Rollout
The ministry's stated approach — beginning with demonstration projects before broader deployment — should not reassure anyone familiar with how Taiwan's green energy expansion has actually worked in practice. Pilot programs and showcase cases have consistently served as the opening phase of full-scale rollouts, with environmental review processes that proved unable or unwilling to constrain them.
If the ministry proceeds with small hydropower development in the same spirit that has driven its solar and wind programs — driven primarily by the need to hit renewable energy quotas, with ecological considerations treated as secondary — the result will be predictable: marginal gains in electricity output at disproportionate cost to river and stream ecosystems.
The arithmetic does not work. Damaging Taiwan's waterways to generate a few hundred thousand kilowatt-hours fails any reasonable cost-benefit test. From a conservation standpoint, it is worse still.
Taiwan's rivers and streams have not yet been subjected to the same systematic damage as its mountains, forests, and wetlands. The DPP government should leave them that way. （Related： Trump's Retreat Is Handing Beijing the Taiwan Strait ｜ Latest ）
