More coal in the energy mix. Vinacomin, meanwhile, had been tasked to supply coal to the power plants planned or under development. They’re among the lowest in Asia, a relic of socialist-era subsidies to heavy industry. Now it has caught a break with the rapid maturation of solar and wind power technologies.
The program is currently in its second phase (DEPP II, 2017-2020) and covers long-term scenario modeling of the energy sector, the integration of renewable energy in the power grid and energy In parallel, the Party’s Central Economic Commission launched its own strategic review.Meanwhile, citing the rapidly falling cost per gigawatt of electricity produced by utility-scale wind and solar power projects, the think tank Carbon Tracker EVN, however, backed by Vinacomin and PetroVietnam, argued for a go-slow strategy on renewable energies. Energy planners proposed Power Development Plan (PDP) 7, which aimed to meet incremental electricity demand mainly by investing in coal-fired power plants and importing thermal coal. Global Legal Group Ltd. and the contributors accept no responsibility for losses that may arise from reliance upon information contained herein. However, members of the newly elected Politburo soon realized that the state energy companies had made a muddle of it, and that they could not duck the problem of restructuring Vietnam’s power development strategy. During the last 25 years Viet Nam’s economic growth reached more than 6% each year. Offered an attractive feed-in tariff (FIT), banks loaned funds and entrepreneurs scrambled to complete projects before a mid-2019 deadline. At the same time, the energy demand increased almost twice as fast as the GDP. According to research from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the process of using energy causes GHG emissions to account for the largest proportion, about 60% of global GHG emissions annually. However, PDP-8’s emphasis will be squarely on rapid deployment of solar and wind power, on using domestic and imported LNG to meet load-balancing needs, on building out the national transmission grid, and on marketizing energy supply and demand.Vietnam’s policy reorientation away from coal is just in time. Or is that really all?We live in a world of sovereign states.

How in years to come was Vietnam going to supply the electricity on which economic growth depends? The resolution is an authoritative and unusually prescriptive document.

Since its leaders abandoned an attempt to implement Soviet-style socialism circa 1990 in favor of a market-driven system, the economy has grown forty-fold since 1990 and is now well and profitably integrated into the world trading system.Politics is another matter entirely: the Communist Party maintains tight control over the institutions of government and denies any interest in evolving. With the public cheering it on, Vietnam’s top leaders give every appearance of having set the nation on the path toward a cleaner and greener energy future.Mongabay is a reader-supported conservation and environmental science news service. In the weeks after its publication, the government issued rules that put flesh on the Party leaders’ endorsement of renewables as the new focal point of power sector development and create a larger and more stable space for both solar and wind power developers. Even if that proves correct, South-East Asia will still have a lot more coal-fired generation than environmental activists would like. Another 3 gigawatts of solar capacity was awaiting grid connection by the end of 2019, and would raise solar power to more than 8% of the electric power system’s installed capacity.Of particular note, in February 2020 the Politburo (that is, the Communist Party’s collective leadership) issued Resolution 55, guidance to the managers of the nation’s energy sector. Production would be inherently unstable, EVN said, fluctuating at Mother Nature’s whim, and this would stress the national electricity distribution grid, risking frequent interruptions and worse. These numbers might already seem staggering but Vietnam’s coal usage in the future would most likely be significantly higher. However, the state companies’ credibility was shot.