Kaohsiung Resilient City: Promoting Photovoltaic Policy

Kaohsiung City, Taiwan

Background&Urban Challenges

Kaohsiung City is a city of 2.8 million people located in Southern Taiwan, just below the Tropic of Cancer in the southern subtropical climate zone. It has an area of 294.6 square kilometers, with elevations varying from its lowest point at sea level to its highest at 3500 meters. The municipality comprises diverse groups of people, diverse landforms, and a distinctive culture; it also sees varied climatic conditions and strong rainfall.

For many years Kaohsiung's development was mostly industrial in nature, in accord with Taiwan's overall economic development. However, the world-class city also has other charms and strengths: beautiful mountains, sea, rivers, and warm sunshine. In recent years, Kaohsiung has strived to promote industrial restructuring in order to build an ecological and green city.

For the Kaohsiung City government, an important consideration is how to balance climate characteristics, industrial restructuring, and the environmental changes of urban planning. To build an ecological, healthy, energy efficient, sustainable, and safe living environment, the city needs to consider the adaptive measures of urban greening such as architectural transformation and public construction.

Solution Descriptions

To meet the city's goal, the Kaohsiung City government established several acts to promote solar photovoltaic energy in the city. The "Establish the functioning of the organization" act established the Inter-Departmental Promotion Committee, which combines professional groups with local community members to strengthen public involvement in photovoltaic projects. In addition to this new committee, the city government also set up a dedicated window about solar energy. The "Elaborate the different types of policy instruments" act aims to create solar photovoltaic policy tools, economic incentives for solar photovoltaic energy and to set up a thorough photovoltaic system. The "Establish the promotion of the subject" act encourages public buildings to set up solar roofs, builds a solar demonstration zone, transforms an illegal construction zone to a photovoltaic creative building and adds photovoltaic panels to agricultural and fishery facilities.

In addition, the "hundreds of mundane photovoltaic Project Promotion Committee " was organized by the Vice Mayor as the convener, Deputy Secretary as vice-convener, and the Department of Public Works as staff offices. The committee is divided into five groups, including general construction group, public buildings group, school buildings group, factory building group and an agriculture and fishing facilities group. The city bureau is creating a new vision for urbanism characterized by wide-ranging and diverse governance.

In building roof structures, Kaohsiung City encourages people to build tin roofs which are upgraded with solar photoelectric panels in accordance with law. It also provides subsidies to raise public incentives to install photovoltaics. These measures not only solve the problem of water leakage on residential roofs during hot weather but also add an open rooftop space to enhance the quality of life. The resulting solar power facilities can also be leased to the Taiwan Power Company. This initiative also helps improve the appearance of the city and provides residents with a predictable income to secure against financial downturns. Kaohsiung's hot climate is now an asset, and the installation of photovoltaics brings opportunities to transform the city.

Result & Reflections

According to 2017 statistics, the city has received 2,179 total applications for solar photovoltaic installations. These efforts anticipate a total energy capacity of up to 226,270 KW (226.27 MW), annual generation capacity of 289 million degrees, 152,912 tons of carbon emissions reductions and 13.2 billion NTD of created value.