Vietnam Should Lower Coal-fired Power for Sustainable Growth: Expert

Reducing the ratio of coal-fired power in Vietnam’s power industry would help minimize the dependence on imported coal while mitigating consequences caused by greenhouse gas emissions, contributing a lot to the global climate change resilience, according to a local expert. Running a small coal-fired proportion would largely contribute to the country’s green growth strategies which partly aim to cut by 8% of greenhouse gas by 2030, the newswire Nangluongvietnam.vn reported, citing Doctor Nguyen Manh Hien. Vietnam will need a large amount of coal for power production which is forecast to reach 63 million tons by 2020, 95 million by 2025 and 129 million by 2030 due to the expansion of coal-fired proportion in the country’s power capacity, Mr. Hien said. Under the revised power master plan VII by 2020 and vision to 2030 approved in March 2016, Vietnam expects to develop coal-fired power capacity by 25.7 gigawatts (GW) or 42.7% of the total power capacity by 2020, to 47.8 GW by 2025 and 55.4 GW by 2030. Vietnam needs to stop building licensed coal-fired power projects and stop licensing new ones to reduce the volume of imported coal and tap domestic coal reserves. Only by lowering coal-fired power capacity, Vietnam can achieve the target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 25% by 2030, according to the expert. (Nangluongvietnam.vn July 14)