Conversations on Vietnam Development
There is a harsh truth that Southeast Asia must face. While the region remains one of the most vulnerable in the world to climate change, member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are a long way behind on meeting their climate commitments.
The Nordic countries are among the strongest performers.
Almost half of the European Union’s (EU) 28 member states have already hit, or are close to hitting, their 2020 renewable energy targets.
But despite this, there has been a gradual slow-down in the rate of renewable energy use across the EU, and some member states have a lot of ground to make up this year.
Tiếp tục đọc “These 11 EU states already meet their 2020 renewable energy targets”
Seasonal pumped hydropower storage (SPHS), an already established yet infrequently used technology, could be an affordable and sustainable solution to store energy and water on an annual scale, according to new IIASA research published in the journal Nature Communications. Compared with other mature storage solutions, such as natural gas, the study shows that there is considerable potential for SPHS to provide highly competitive energy storage costs.
Tiếp tục đọc “Could water solve the renewable energy storage challenge?”
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| The country is to prioritise both wind and solar energy, and encourage deep investment in the sector, among others. Photo: Shutterstock |
Under the Politburo’s recently-enacted Resolution No.55 NQ/TW on the country’s development strategy for energy over the next 10 years and with a vision towards 2045, targets have been set for sufficient and stable supply energy with reasonable prices, as well as accelerated development of a comprehensive, competitive, and transparent energy market, and diversified ownership and business models.
Doan Van Binh, director of the Institute of Energy and Science at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, said that since implementing 2007’s Resolution No.18 NQ/TW, which had a vision towards 2050, specific goals have been reached. However, the international and domestic context requires an energy strategy with breakthrough solutions that meet the country’s new development and integration requirements. “The new resolution played an important role as it pointed out weakness during the past and the reason for these. But new situations force us to restructure,” said Binh.
The first is obvious—savings. I have never seen any company adopt renewables purely out of altruism. There’s always a commercial angle. Owners of large real estate portfolios try to monetise their “rooftop assets”, other companies want to diversify their energy source, or simply adopt solar to hedge against rising energy costs.
Battery storage costs have evolved rapidly over the past several years, necessitating an update to storage cost projections used in long-term planning models and other activities. This work documents the development of these projections, which are based on recent publications of storage costs. The projections show a wide range of storage costs, both in terms of current costs as well as future costs. Although the range in projections is considerable, all projections do show a decline in capital costs, with cost reductions by 2025 of 10-52%. The cost projections developed in this work utilize the normalized cost reductions across the literature, and result in 21-67% capital cost reductions by 2030 and 31-80% cost reductions by 2050. The cost projections are also accompanied by assumed operations and maintenance costs, lifetimes, and round-trip efficiencies, and these performance metrics are benchmarked against other published values.
Download full report https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf
English: What’s stopping corporates from switching to clean energy in Vietnam?
by Evan Scandling, Clean Energy Investment Accelerator
Nhu cầu năng lượng mặt trời quy mô lớn đang tăng ở Việt Nam, nhưng các rào cản vẫn tồn tại ở một thị trường phát triển mạnh về năng lượng tái tạo cho các doanh nghiệp lớn. Làm thế nào Việt Nam có thể dịch chuyển nhanh hơn để thực hiện tham vọng năng lượng sạch của mình?
Một cánh đồng điện gió ở tỉnh Ninh Thuận, miền Nam Việt Nam. AEON, nhà phát triển trung tâm mua sắm Nhật Bản và Anheuser-Busch InBev, nhà máy bia lớn nhất thế giới, có sự hiện diện lớn ở Việt Nam và cam kết chỉ mua năng lượng sạch.
Thị trường Việt Nam cho năng lượng tái tạo quy mô lớn đang trên đà .
Chưa đầy một năm từ khi chưa có trang trại năng lượng mặt trời quy mô lớn nào, thì Việt Nam dự kiến sẽ có hơn 4.200 megawatt (MW) năng lượng mặt trời được triển khai và cung cấp điện cho lưới điện quốc gia vào cuối tháng 6 năm 2019 khi Chương trình giá bán điện năng sản xuất từ nguồn năng lượng tái tạo (FIT) hết hạn. Thúc đẩy FIT trong và ngoài nước gần đây đã tăng lên, thu hút quan tâm của các nhà đầu tư và ước tính rằng hơn 4.600 MW dự án điện gió có thể được hoàn thành vào năm 2021. Bằng nhiều biện pháp nào, việc Việt Nam bổ sung hơn 8.000 MW điện mặt trời và gió mới vào mạng lưới chung trong một vài năm là rất ấn tượng, đặc biệt là khi Việt Nam nỗ lực giảm phát thải tới 25% trong khi vẫn đáp ứng nhu cầu về điện dự kiến sẽ tăng trung bình 8% mỗi năm vào năm 2035. Tiếp tục đọc “Điều gì cản trở các doanh nghiệp lớn chuyển sang năng lượng sạch tại Việt Nam?”
For a few months earlier this year, it seemed like there was no stopping the wave of renewable energy projects coming online in Vietnam.
In March, the Srepok 1-Quang Minh solar power plant, Vietnam’s largest at the time, opened in Dak Lak Province. In September, it was surpassed by the Dau Tieng Solar Power Complex in Tay Ninh Province, which is Southeast Asia’s largest solar farm. The following month, the Asia Development Bank agreed to help fund the country’s first floating solar power facility on a reservoir in Binh Thuan Province. If built, it will be the region’s largest such facility. And in October, Vietnam Electricity (EVN) announced that 12,765 rooftop solar systems are selling power to the grid nationwide.
Wind power is expected to grow dramatically as well, with installed capacity forecast to more than triple by 2021, launching Vietnam toward the top of Southeast Asia in this sector. These projects were far from the only ones to come online recently. In the second quarter of this year, 81 new solar facilities were added to Vietnam’s power grid, compared to just five in the first quarter of 2019.
The Dau Tieng Solar Power Complex in Tay Ninh. Photo via VnExpress/Quynh Tran.
This growth in renewable power generation is vital, as in July, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) admitted that the country is likely to face severe power shortages starting in 2021. Power generation capacity will need to increase from the current 48.6 gigawatts (GW) to 60 GW in 2020 and 130 GW by 2030. This is due to rapidly rising electricity demand as Vietnam continues its impressive economic growth, and delays on major thermal- and gas-fired power stations. Such an expansion of capacity is expected to cost nearly US$7 billion a year.
The explosion of solar projects in particular was spurred by a feed-in tariff (FiT) introduced by the Vietnamese government in 2017. A FiT is the rate paid by a power utility, in this case the government-owned Vietnam Electricity (EVN), to the company which operates a solar plant. The 9.35 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) tariff established by MOIT was very generous, and developers flooded in. A wind energy FiT was initiated in September 2018 as well, though growth hasn’t been quite as robust as solar.
The sheer numbers behind this solar surge are incredible, and Vietnam has become the darling of investment in the region, easily eclipsing its neighbors. The 86 new projects completed in the first half of this year added 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of capacity to the national grid, equaling about 10% of Vietnam’s total power capacity. EVN reportedly set up special teams working three shifts a day just to connect new plants.
The government had aimed to have 850 megawatts (MW) of solar online by 2020, while the 4.5 GW installed thus far has already reached their 2025 goal. Tiếp tục đọc “In the Race to Power Vietnam, Green Energy Grows Faster Than Policies Can Catch Up”
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Nguyen Dang Anh Thi |
It has become necessary since a shortage is forecast for several years starting in 2020.
With the seventh National Power Development Plan (2011-2020) focusing primarily on traditional energy sources like thermal and hydropower, 47 out of 62 power projects, the majority being thermal, are behind schedule due to lack of funding and local resentment against thermal plants.
Tiếp tục đọc “Vietnam faces growing threat to energy security, environment”
Large-scale solar energy uptake is growing in Vietnam, but barriers persist to a thriving market for corporate renewable energy. How can Vietnam move faster to fulfill its clean energy ambitions?
Clean Energy Investment Accelerator Vietnam
If you decide that on-site PV is of interest to you, based on this checklist, the next step would be to perform a more detailed technical and engineering feasibility assessment. Checklist to Determine if Your Factory Should Explore Solar PV Key questions to ask about your facility are listed below. More detail for each can be found in the sections that follow.
✓ Does your factory own the building or have a long-term lease (20+ years)?
✓ Do you have space available on your roof for solar panels and/or sufficient land for a ground-mounted system?
✓ Is the roof structurally sound and will it be in place for the duration of the economic life of the solar PV system (typically, 20-25 years?)
✓ Are there any trees, walls, buildings or other structures that shade the area where the solar panels would be located?
✓ Does the factory’s operational schedule and electricity consumption align with solar production?
✓ Does your company allow the use of operational budgets to lease equipment? Or does your company’s budget allow for equipment to be purchased with capital budgets?
✓ If your company is interested in a solar lease, would it be able to sign at least a 10-year contract?
✓ Would your solar PV system qualify for incentives, such as net metering and tax breaks? If you answer YES to all these questions, your factory is well positioned to consider solar. If you answered NO to some of these questions, there may still be other options for renewable energy procurement. The following sections provide a deeper look at these considerations and offer a more detailed explanation of the primary and current financing options for on-site solar PV electricity in Vietnam.
Wind Energy Potential – Vietnam, Netherlands Enterprise Agency, July 27, 2018
Sổ tay đầu tư năng lượng gió tại VN, DAVI Renewable Energies, 30/10/2106
Toàn cảnh chính sách điện mặt trời tại VN tháng 12, 2019
News:
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| Babeth Ngoc Han Lefur, country director, Oxfam in Vietnam |
As climate change is progressing at an even greater pace than expected by various climate modelling scenarios, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is urging countries to take robust action to cut down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to limit the average global temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030. In September 2019, people in more than 150 countries were stepping up to support young climate strikers and demand an end to the age of fossil fuels and ensure a rapid, equitable energy revolution. The climate crisis will not wait, so neither should we. The 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 25) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2019 calls for action and champions to demand more ambition from nations to fight the climate crisis. This is also an invitation to elevate care for the environment into a national theme where all have a role to play. Tiếp tục đọc “Developing renewable energy in Vietnam Through the lens of equality and sustainability”
Get ready for auctions! After months of confusion and uncertainty over the policy for solar power development in Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc today issued his conclusions and looks to have signed the death knell for solar feed in tariffs (FiT) in favor of competitive auctions.
In Notification No. 402/TB-VPCP dated 22 November 2019, the Prime Minster concluded that rational future development of the sector necessitates introducing an auction system for ground-mounted solar projects. FiTs will continue to apply only for rooftop solar projects and certain already-approved ground-mounted projects. Tiếp tục đọc “Vietnam’s PM decides to do away with solar FiTs in favor of auctions”
