A projected funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH has helped Vietnam enhance its capacity to develop wind power after five years.The Electricity and Renewable Energy Authority (EREA) under the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry (MOIT) and the GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) on November 23 jointly commemorated during the closing ceremony the five years of implementation of the “Support to the Up-scaling of Wind Power in Vietnam” project in Hanoi, with the participation of key wind power stakeholders such as project developers, financing institutions and investors.
Participants at the closing ceremony. Photo: GIZ Energy
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Also, the project implemented numerous technical and financial trainings for the public and private sectors and supported Vietnamese-German research cooperation on wind power between 2014 and 2018 within the framework of the German Climate Technology Initiative.
German development cooperation on wind power in Vietnam started actually in 2009 with the first wind feed-in tariff being issued in 2011. Given the success of the cooperation, a follow-up project was agreed on which now in 2018 comes to an end.
An important early stage milestone was the publishing of the “Wind Investment Guidelines in Vietnam”, describing every step and license within the development and investment/financing process and available both in Vietnamese and English.
As many as 1,370 people participated in the trainings, coming from government institutions, universities and private actors, including project developers, national banks or local engineering and consulting firms. Another key achievement was the Project’s contribution to consulting the Government of Vietnam to approve a decision on the increase in wind tariffs in September 2018.
The project contributed to the installation of 200 MW from 6 wind power plants which provides
clean power to 140,000 households. Nearly 400,000 tons of CO2 equivalent were avoided attributable to the project.
“In 2013, our governments agreed that energy should be a priority area of our bilateral development cooperation. Only one year later, we started implementing this wind project at a time where there was no major market development but rather skepticism especially within the private sector.
Now five years later, more and more investors both domestic as well as international are lining up to develop solar and wind in Vietnam. If ever a program was pivotal and catalytic – this is it,” said Martin Hoppe, head of economic cooperation and development at the German Embassy.
Located in the monsoon climate zone and shaped by its over 3,000 km long coastline, Vietnam has extensive resources to develop wind energy. As the country’s technical potential of wind power is assessed at 27 GW, wind technologies have rapidly developed, their prices have been lower and the government has issued policies to support the development of wind power, Vietnam will have an increasing number of wind power projects nationwide.
To encourage private investment in the sector, the government regulates that the FIT for solar power is set at 9.35 cents per kWh while the rates for onshore and offshore wind power projects are 8.5 US cents and 9.8 US cents per kWh, respectively.
