Pingtung household electricity to fully use green power this year: county chief

Taipei, Jan. 16 (CNA) The leader of Pingtung County on Sunday pledged that the household electricity in the southernmost county of Taiwan would be fully generated using renewable energy sources before the end of 2022.

Pan Men-an (潘孟安) made the pledge during a ceremony to mark the start of electricity generation at a solar farm located within his county Sunday.

According to Pan, Pingtung launched a program in 2019 to help farmers establish solar facilities on farmland affected by land subsidence.

Renewable energy sources like solar panels within his county currently generate 1.4 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) a year and can support the needs of 75 percent of households in Pingtung, Pan said.

If everything goes well, household electricity in Pingtung will be able to be fully supported by green energy before the end of this year, he added.

According to the county government, since 2019, it has chosen a number of pieces of land for the project at the county's Donggang, Linbian, Jiadong, and Fangliao townships that are seriously affected by land subsidence or are unsuitable for agriculture.

"In so doing, it can help make better use of idle lands while boosting the income of farmers who can receive rents from the lands they rented to solar energy companies," Pan said.

A 73-year-old fruit farmer surnamed Lin (林) told reporters that he rented a piece of his land to the Ysolar Co. to build a solar farm on it.

The reason he agreed to do so was that the piece of land is prone to flooding during harvest season and so he thought he might as well rent the land to a solar energy company.