Taiwan's president confident of phasing out nuclear power by 2025

She emphasised this as over 5,000 protesters demanded a faster approach.

Focus Taiwan reported that President Tsai Ing-wen reasserted Taiwan's intention to phase out nuclear energy by 2025 as planned on Saturday, when more than 5,000 people took to the streets across the country to demand the government move faster to meet that goal.

"Taiwan in 2025 will no longer rely on nuclear power. Taiwan will have embraced clean and sustainable energy by then,” Tsai said on her Facebook page.

Taiwan has been working to develop renewable energy, she said, adding that green energy output in Taiwan grew by 21.2 percent from 2015 to 2016, to a record-high 12.69 billion kilowatt-hours.

The amendment to The Electricity Act earlier this year also pushed the development of green energy with the goal that it should account for 20 percent of total electricity generation by 2025, according to Tsai.

Tsai also envisioned that one day there will be hundreds of offshore wind turbines along the coastline of Taiwan and that "solar power panels will cover rooftops, factories, unused land and reservoirs."

In addition, Tsai also mentioned sustainable energy options such as geothermal and biogas energy.

Demonstrations were held on Saturday in Taipei, Kaohsiung and Taitung to protest the continued use of nuclear power in Taiwan on the sixth anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami in Japan that resulted in a nuclear incident, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the region around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.