A critical review of the World's first renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for large electricity users in Taiwan: The return of the RPS?

To deal with climate change, most countries in the world have already set their own emission reduction targets and developed subsidy schemes to promote the production of renewable electricity (RE). In REN 21's Renewables 2019 Global Status Report, mainly three types of dominant RE promotion schemes are identified: feed-in policies, renewable portfolio standard (RPS)/quota policies, and tendering. Based on the statistics, we found a trend of an increase in both the feed-in tariff and tendering scheme and a decrease in the RPS scheme. Despite this trend, in April 2019, the Taiwanese Parliament passed an amendment to the Renewable Energy Act of 2009 and introduced an RPS scheme for large-electricity users to promote the 2025 energy transition and nuclear-free homeland policy. This is not only the first of this type worldwide but also the most stringent, because the bundled renewable energy certificate (REC) must meet the requirement. This article will provide an overview and a critical review of this scheme, particularly about its effectiveness in promoting further RE development.