I picture a family in the bottom fifth of Taiwan’s income ladder. Households in that group lived on NT$397,000 (US$12,172) on average last year. That comes to about NT$33,000 a month. The richest fifth had 6.17 times as much, the widest gap in nearly 14 years. This family cooks rice in a Tatung electric cooker and cooks soup using a 20kg cylinder of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Hsinchu City alone has more than 22,000 households that still rely on cylinders. Local reports say elderly people living alone and poor families struggle to pay for a gas connection.
CPC Corp, Taiwan froze cylinder prices in June and again in August. Its formula called for increases of NT$2.8 and NT$3.4 per kilogram. CPC swallowed the difference. The rice cooker depends on a different gas, the liquefied natural gas (LNG) burned in Taiwan’s power plants.
Washington handled its own fuel squeeze differently. On Oct. 9 it waived its sanctions on Russian diesel, three weeks after US President Donald Trump signed a law to harden them. That diesel feeds Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war economy, which kills Ukrainians every day. Diesel costs more than US$6 a gallon [US$1.59 per liter], and midterm elections in the US are weeks away.
Most commentary focused on pump prices in the US and on Ukraine. Taiwan should draw its own lesson.
Taiwan’s partners count on economic sanctions to deter a Chinese blockade. That threat deters only if Beijing expects the sanctions to hold even when they hurt Western voters. Russian diesel offered the easy test and the sanctions lasted 21 days.
Sanctions on China would hit American consumers on day one. Chinese goods run through US supply chains in a way that Russian fuel never did. Beijing can time a crisis for the months before an election in the US. The next presidential vote in the US falls in November 2028.
In a blockade, Taiwan’s fuel prices would climb before any sanctions take effect. Insurers move first. War-risk underwriters canceled or repriced cover around Hormuz this year. Tanker traffic collapsed within days.
Ukraine already knows how unreliable Trump can be on energy. He opened the US market to Russian diesel and told Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries.
Taipei already diversifies its gas suppliers. It plans to lift the US share of its LNG imports to 25 percent from about 10 percent by 2029. Taipei should diversify its partnerships the same way, without turning against Washington.
Europe cut its dependence on Russian gas after 2022. Russia supplied 45 percent of the EU’s gas imports in 2021 and roughly one-eighth last year.
EU rules set a 90 percent target for gas storage before each winter. Gas produced 16.7 percent of EU electricity last year and renewables 47.7 percent, according to the think tank Ember.
France burned gas for 3 percent of its electricity last year. Its nuclear reactors supplied 68 percent, according to grid operator RTE. Europe has also kept its ban on Russian refined products since February 2023.
Lutz Gullner heads the European Economic and Trade Office in Taipei, and Frederic Laplanche leads the French Office. Taipei should work with both offices to reach European grid operators and gas storage companies.
I argued in August, for the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, that Europe’s chips depend on Taiwan’s grid.
Taiwan imported about 95 percent of its energy last year, according to the Atlantic Council. The Ministry of Economic Affairs put crude reserves at 140 to 150 days in May. The law requires 90.
The Petroleum Administration Act (石油管理法) sets a separate floor for cooking gas, 25 days of LPG sales. Taiwan holds far less LNG. Gas-fired plants produce about half of Taiwan’s electricity. The law requires only 11 days of LNG stock, and 14 from next year. Qatar supplies about 30 percent of Taiwan’s gas. Inventories were held at about 12 days when the war with Iran disrupted Qatari cargoes. Beijing’s planners know where to aim.
A blockade reaches this family through the plug before the cylinder. Its rice cooker and its fan run on a grid that burns gas for about half its power. Taipower rationed electricity by district during the shortfall of May 2021.
A long blockade forces it to ration again, neighborhood after neighborhood.
Cooking gas lasts longer, on its 25-day floor. CPC then pays a wartime import bill to hold the cylinder price, or the price climbs. Wealthier households can stock up and buy batteries. This family lives on NT$33,000 a month and can afford neither.
Academic research points the same way. Tat-Dat Bui of National Taiwan Ocean University, Tseng Ming-Lang (曾明朗) of Asia University and three coauthors analyzed the attributes of Taiwan’s energy resilience in “Assessing energy resilience under uncertainty in Taiwan: System response ability and energy sufficiency,” Energy Strategy Reviews, vol. 53 (2024), article 101403.
Resilience depended most on the system’s ability to respond and on energy sufficiency. Infrastructure recovery and national energy efficiency planning were among the five criteria the authors found important, but underperforming, and they called for investment there.
Taipei should start with gas storage and treat 14 days as a floor.
Energy Administration officials want to go further and are surveying land for new tanks. CPC is expanding its Taichung and Guantang terminals.
The government should finance a strategic gas reserve from the national budget. That would take storage off CPC’s books and make it a matter of national security.
Taipei has also said it would consider joining an international LNG reserve in Japan or South Korea. Taipei wants a guarantee that the cargoes could still reach Taiwan in a conflict. No treaty can give that guarantee. Taipei can secure it only with tanks on its own soil.
Taipower launched a NT$564.5 billion grid resilience plan in 2022, after a fault blacked out more than 5 million households. The plan aims to decentralize the network and move substations indoors. Taipower should speed it up. A fault would darken one district, not a whole region.
Taiwan needs gas reserves that outlast the first weeks of a blockade. Then Beijing would have to hold the blockade longer, with Chinese exporters paying for every extra week.
Other governments make the sanctions promises on Taiwan’s behalf. Washington on Oct. 9 showed how quickly it can rewrite those promises. Taipei can decide how much gas Taiwan stores and the Legislative Yuan can fund it in the next budget.
Romain Blachier, associate expert at the Fondation Jean-Jaures, teaches and consults on energy policy and international relations.