Taiwan has endured three major outages in the last seven years, accompanied by a slew of smaller disruptions in the past year.
Manufacturing chips requires a lot of energy and electricity, and the government is struggling to meet the island's energy needs. "Taipower has been losing money, which also raises concerns about potential power disruptions for both the semiconductor industry and the overall Taiwanese economy," Michelle Brophy, director of research at market intelligence platform AlphaSense.
If Taiwan is forced to ration electricity more frequently in the future due to limited supplies, its semiconductor firms will suffer.Electricity consumption from Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing industry is set to increase 236% between 2021 and 2030, the same report found.