Green energy goals still face many challenges

Dr. Vo Tri Thanh, Director of the Institute for Brand Strategy and Competitiveness

Power Plan 8 prioritizes the strong development of renewable energy sources for electricity production, reaching a rate of about 30.9 - 39.2% by 2030; by 2050, the renewable energy rate is expected to reach 67.5 - 71.5%. What are the difficulties in achieving this goal, sir?

Implementing Power Plan 8 is a decisive factor in implementing the green transformation and realizing the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 0 (Net Zero) in Vietnam by 2050, in which developing renewable energy such as wind power and solar power is extremely important. However, the implementation of wind power and solar power projects is currently facing many difficulties, especially for wind power and offshore wind power, which is relevant to planning, investment attraction and implementation. For example, shifting to gas electricity to gradually replace coal power requires changing the structure to the implementation and the speed of implementation in a very short period. This is an extremely big challenge.

In addition, in the field of renewable energy development, due to the low stability, it is necessary to have a power grid or network to connect and integrate. This is also a challenge for renewable energy development. In addition, technological capacity in general and energy storage technology is current global challeges.

With the existing potential and challenges, what is the solution to achieve the goals?

In terms of Vietnam's potential and experience, the wind and solar power goals can be achieved, but only in the total capacity and how to effectively realize them is another story and involves many fields. Accordingly, Vietnam must timely deal with energy structure, resource attraction, investment capital, as well as disbursement. Especially the issue of implementation, mechanism and speed of implementation to ensure the implementation time of Power Plan 8, as well as the green transformation goal for the energy sector and the entire Vietnamese economy are of urgent needs.

In the process of green energy transition, there are many new areas, such as offshore wind power, which is still very new to Vietnam. Therefore, there will be difficulties and problems related to planning; investment, investment licensing; market access conditions; legal regulations on the sea, etc. How do you assess these difficulties?

Despite deploying offshore wind power is quite new and rather complicated in Vietnam, this field is not completely new in the world. Therefore, when implementing, we need to learn and summarize the experiences of countries around the world to solve that problem.

However, developing offshore wind power is not only a matter of technology and finance, but the current challenge is the development plan of this electricity sector. Therefore, in my opinion, we should pilot a few projects. Developing energy, including offshore wind power, will have a lot of potential, so there should be a mechanism to both implement and perfect policies and laws, along with learning from the experiences of countries around the world.

Thank you very much!