Wind power gets a striking development in recent years. However, advanced materials and technology for manufacturing wind turbines are necessary but usually unavailable in a developing country like Taiwan. In such a case, the energy inputs during overseas manufacture and transportation of wind turbines are usually ignored as the energy efficiency of a wind power system is surveyed. In this study, three demonstration wind systems -Mailiao, Jhongtun, and Chunfong were analyzed to examine life cycle Energy Return on Investment (EROI) and CO
2 emission for wind energy in Taiwan. The life cycle EROIs were calculated as 13.74, 22.24, and 19.70, respectively, for the three abovementioned demonstration system. The results suggest that the life cycle EROI may violate the rule of the effect of economies of scale if the frequent breakdowns and lacking of wind turbine parts for the equipment repairs are considered. Meanwhile, the EROIs without consideration of energy inputs during overseas manufacture and transportation were 25.09, 40.36 and 36.59, respectively. In other words, the EROIs are significantly affected by the overseas energy inputs. In addition, 47.57% of CO
2 emission of the wind power system occurred in foreign lands, which leads to the underestimation of CO
2 emission in Taiwan. Moreover, the low capacity factors caused by the ineffective wind turbines performance tend to obviously downgrade the EROIs.
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