In Taiwan, it has set a target of 15 GW installed capacity for offshore wind energy in 10 years from 2026. The massive development of the offshore wind farms is bound to the competition with current existing sea users and the shallow sea areas in the Taiwan Strait, released for developing offshore wind farms, so the planning of offshore wind farms to the deep-sea area (water depths more than fifty meters) has become a trend. Therefore, to solve the space competition problem and the specific usable space of offshore wind farms in Taiwan, this paper adapts ocean spatial suitability analysis to estimate the priority of deep-water wind farm development in Taiwan, which considers the potential demand for offshore wind farms, sea space vulnerability, and the space competition relationship. The results can provide relevant authorities with reference to marine spatial planning for offshore wind farms in Taiwan.
Renewable energy, especially offshore wind energy is a critical national energy policy in Taiwan. According to the planning target of the Energy Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, an estimated total of 15 GW of installed capacity will be released in 10 years from 2026 to 2035. Massive development of offshore wind farms is bound to the competition with many existing sea users, so marine management and finding suitable sites to develop offshore wind farms has become urgent to prevent the competition problem. Marine management is the major point of marine policy in nations, and it is a long-term work leading to the overall development direction. In the fierce competition in the ocean economy among countries, marine spatial planning (MSP) is more important. Thus, many countries are accelerating the launch of marine spatial planning to ensure their competitiveness in international marine development. However, Taiwan has not established an integrated marine management system, and marine management in Taiwan depends on the power of its various governmental departments. Therefore, integrated planning of the ocean policies and the management to achieve sustainable ocean utilization is necessary for Taiwan. This study separately analyzes the potential demand of wind farms and the vulnerability of sea space. Since the available high-resolution sea area grid topographic map is a 200-meter grid, this paper adopts a 200m x 200 m grid as a basic unit for all the analysis. At first, the factors of the potential analysis for developing offshore wind farms include water depths, wind speed, and sediment of sea area. The results of the potential analysis were calculated by the product of the wind speed and sediment level with the classification of water depths. Second, removed all the existing regions of other used or unsatisfied "the application of site planning of offshore wind power plant regulations" sea areas. Third, the vulnerability analysis quantifies the negative impacts of the interactions of the currently used sea areas such as societies, economy, environments, and resilience. This paper adopts the entropy weight method to calculate the vulnerability index of the ocean area. Finally, based on the results of spatial coopetition analysis and ocean spatial vulnerability analysis, the development priorities of deep-sea area offshore wind farms by GIS are discussed. It can provide relevant authorities with references to marine spatial planning for offshore wind farms in Taiwan.
