Vietnam’s green energy projects sprouting up in slow motion: report

The number of renewable energy projects in Vietnam has been rising rapidly over the last 10 months, according to a report released on Monday last week by a Vietnamese finance and business information corporation.

Nine projects to generate and distribute electricity from renewable sources were registered in Vietnam each month on average during the period after the Vietnamese government increased the price of solar energy to 9.35 cent/kWh (VND2094/kWh) last June, according to the “Vietnam Renewable Energy Report 2018” report by StoxPlus.

The report says there are 245 renewable energy projects in Vietnam right now, including solar and wind energy.

In theory, once all 245 projects go into operation, their energy output could amount to 23.2 GW, about 10 times more than the goal of 2.65 GW for 2020 set by the state-owned Vietnam Electricity Corporation (EVN) back in 2011.

However, only 19 percent of registered projects have reached the construction stage and just 8 percent are currently in operation. 

Challenges such as a lack of comprehensive information and the lack of EVN’s credit ratings were possible reasons for the delays, said Vu My Dung, a senior analyst at StoxPlus.

“The lack of comprehensive information is the first challenge for investors and developers of renewable energy projects. This can create confusion and hesitation among investors, developers and other involved entities,” she said.

Dung said that in order to hasten the developments of these projects and push them to completion before June next year, a business model of cooperation between domestic and foreign firms might be considered, as the latter possess superior technologies, experience and financial capabilities.

Domestic and foreign firms joining hand to launch renewable energy projects in Vietnam is not unheard of. In February, Sharp Corporation and Vietnam's Gia Lai Electricity JSC agreed to build a 48MW plant in Thua Thien Hue Province on Vietnam’s central coast, Japan's JCN Newswire said. The plant is expected to start operations in September, generating enough power for 32,628 average households in Vietnam, or around 0.1 percent of its population, said ICON, a news website run by EVN.