Beyond Financing as a Tool: Conflicting Rationalities in Taiwan’s Renewable Energy

• In Event: Enviromental Politics

Abstract

This study examines renewable energy financing in Taiwan to ask whether green finance extends conventional economic rationality or opens space for ecological/reflexive rationality. While existing research focuses on market efficiency and financial instruments, the everyday operation of renewable energy finance reveals hybrid institutional arrangements in which economic and ecological rationalities coexist in tension.

The paper compares two contrasting models: capital-intensive offshore wind aligned with national industrial strategy, and community-based solar citizen power plants centered on local governance and civic participation. Using literature and policy analysis, financing data, and qualitative interviews, the study investigates how credit assessment models and institutional design shape project financeability.

Findings suggest that green finance in Taiwan does not replace existing financial logics but selectively embeds ecological considerations within traditional credit systems. This produces uneven outcomes: projects compatible with standardized financial models are privileged, while socially oriented energy initiatives face structural barriers. Green finance thus operates as a contested governance arena in which rationality, institutional power, and distributive consequences are negotiated.

Authors

• Hui-Tzu Huang, Department of Cooperative Economics and Social Entrepreneurship, Feng Chia University

• Yun-Chung Ting, Academia Sinica