Pacing for Renewable Energy Development: The Developmental State in Taiwan’s Offshore Wind Power

Abstract

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, a green economy has been promoted as a way to foster sustainable development and eradicate poverty at the same time. Many states have become more active in investing in renewable technologies and allocating capital to renewable energy development. With the rapid growth of the green economy in East Asian countries (e.g., China, South Korea, and Taiwan), however, there is a strong state presence in green economic development. These East Asian developmental states have gone beyond capital allocation and fostering new technologies. Furthermore, the developmental states have invented or reinvented with new means and measures to intervene in the building of a green economy. This article thus focuses on how the Asian developmental state has evolved through renewable energy development. By employing Taiwan’s offshore wind power development as a case study, this article stresses three main arguments. First, although Taiwan’s developmental state has become more restricted under neoliberalization, policy tools have been reinvented or altered to fulfill the objective of local industrial development in Taiwan. Second, the state intervenes in new energy industry development not merely through policy tools, but also its control over infrastructures. Third, by treating offshore wind power development as a green societal mission, the state is thus able to reunite its developmentalist drive for growth with the rising environmentalist demand for energy transition, sustaining its dominant role in the emerging green economy. Key Words: developmental state, energy transition, infrastructures, offshore wind power, Taiwan.