Taiwan’s energy system must be protected against Guns and Knives

North oil, south electricity (北油，南電)

Given recent developments, including Taiwan’s planned counter-blockade drills, I’m including some comments I made at an Atlantic Council event, Enhancing Taiwan’s energy resilience: A cross-strait and beyond seminar.

Taiwan’s energy system must be protected against Guns and Knives

Image: U.S. Navy, Aerial view of the Pearl Harbor submarine base and adjacent fuel tank farms on October 13, 1941

Most people watching this event recognize energy’s strategic importance, but it’s worth sharing a vignette from history. Before we dive in, I want to be clear that both Japan and the U.S. of today are vastly different than in 1941. But at Pearl Harbor, both Imperial Japanese and US forces suffered from profound military intelligence failures. It’s well known that the U.S. misinterpreted signals that would have predicted the attack, while the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) failed to target U.S. aircraft carriers. But the biggest blunder of all was the failure of the IJN to target U.S. logistics, especially exposed oil tanks. Had the IJN taken out the oil tanks they would have immobilized the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet.

In the words of Admiral Nimitz, “we had four and a half million barrels of oil out there and all of it was vulnerable to 50 caliber bullets. Had the Japanese destroyed the oil, it would have prolonged the war another two years.”

Admiral Nimitz arguably underestimated the effects of an energy outage. In an alternate universe, what if instead of committing an act of overt military aggression, the Imperial Japanese intelligence services had instead deniably destroyed all the oil tanks via sabotage? History might look vastly different.

Even though logistics and energy may seem boring, wars are won and lost by both guns and knives.

Source: Atlantic Council

Moving to the present day, there are many reasons for concern. As you can see, East Asia’s democracies are vastly more reliant on maritime energy imports than the PRC. Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea import virtually all of their hydrocarbons via interdictable maritime routes.

While the PRC has some energy advantages, it’s not 10 feet tall, of course. It’s not in the CCP’s interest to act coercively, given its many vulnerabilities that could be proportionately and reciprocally addressed, if needed.

Since Taiwan’s electricity supply will be critical in any contingency, we need to better understand its nuances. Northern Taiwan is strategically important because it’s the capital region and because it’s home to more than 40 percent of Taiwan’s population. As Resilience Media notes, north Taiwan also isn’t self-sufficient in electricity.

Source: Taipower

Accordingly, resiliency planners need to focus efforts on northern Taiwan. We’re going to need more generation in and around Taipei.

While renewables are useful and we should build them everywhere, we can’t solely rely on them in northern Taiwan. Since Taipei and Seattle are roughly as sunny, northern Taiwan may need to rely on oil in a near-term crisis, as Taiwan has over 100 days of inventory. Over the medium and long-terms, northern Taiwan may need to rely on nuclear energy.

Image: World Bank Solar Atlas

Note: Red and orange colors indicate strong solar potential; green and blue indicate weak sunlight potential

Given Taiwan’s regional nuances, the ROC should consider organizing into energy districts, just as the U.S. does, in part, via Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts, or PADDs.

Here’s what a PADD might look like in Taiwan, with northern, eastern, southern, and central districts. Dividing the island into different blocks will help optimize planning.

Images: Energy Information Administration and the ROC government’s TCCIP

Finally, in my own personal opinion, the U.S. and Taiwan should increase energy resilience cooperation. That will entail working across humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, as well as cyber and sabotage risks.

Cooperation should arguably involve rotating U.S. personnel from across the DOE, NRC, national laboratories, and more as part of a U.S.-Taiwan Energy Resilience Task Force.

Such cooperation need not be public: the U.S. should prefer substantive support for Taiwan over showy displays and emphasize the One China policy. But the U.S. and others should also not shy away from upsetting Beijing.

Taiwan is already strengthening itself, including by increasing military spending to 5% of GDP by 2030 and purchasing billions of dollars of U.S. defense equipment. These efforts by Taipei are commendable and constructive, especially because coalitional military capabilities will be of paramount importance in any contingency.

At the same time, we should learn from history and appreciate the importance of energy resiliency.

We must secure our free societies from the threat of coercion from guns and our energy systems from sabotage by knives. Thank you.

Joseph Webster is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative; he also edits the independent China-Russia Report. This analysis reflects his own personal opinion.

The China-Russia Report is an independent, nonpartisan newsletter covering political, economic, and security affairs within and between China and Russia. All articles, comments, op-eds, etc represent only the personal opinion of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the position(s) of The China-Russia Report.