Posted on June 2, 2025
The winds of change have suddenly blown Taiwan’s most recent offshore wind tender off course with the unexpected cancellation of two important projects – cutting 600MW of potential power from the programme.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) served Corio Generation and EnerVest Ltd their marching papers last week after the two developers failed to pass the Energy Agency’s strict review, disqualifying them from the 3-2 planning phase which they were awarded space on in 2023.
A total of five operators with a combined 2.7GW of projected projects were allocated capacity in this phase, however, combined with the cancellation of the 300MW Haixia 1 site last month, a total of 900 MW has now been revoked across recent phases.
Chao Guo, lead analyst for Greater China and Taiwan at TGS | 4C Offshore, weighed in with his thoughts on why the projects failed to pass the survey.
“While both projects submitted documentation on time, the inability to meet localisation requirements was likely the core issue,” he said.
“The MOEA signalled some flexibility in phase 3-2 by allowing developers to apply for exemptions on specific localisation items, the overall policy still required a minimum localisation score of 70 points across 24 components.
“In contrast, phase 3-3 is expected to remove mandatory localisation entirely, instead shifting to an incentive-based approach.
“The MOEA review likely re-validated each project’s actual localisation execution plan and supplier agreements — any shortfall, inconsistency, or unapproved deviations could result in disqualification.”
Chao raised a number of other reasons why the two developers may have been unsuccessful in this most recent round, citing financial viability concerns, timeline risks, shareholder alterations and even the scale of the projects.
“Notably, these cancelled projects were smaller in scale compared to other awarded projects in 3-2,” he added.
“This lower capacity likely undermined economies of scale, particularly in procurement and construction, as well as cost competitiveness and scoring ability in technical evaluation.
“Without scale-driven cost advantages, these projects struggled to meet the bar set by both technical review and policy expectations.”
It is currently unknown whether the MOEA will open these gaps up to new operators or roll them into the next phase, 3-3.
According to Chao, infrastructure readiness such as with ports, the grid and the supply chain will influence the next steps.
