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Solar Rules Weaken Vietnam's Love-Hate Relationship to Coal

VOA News

   Near the southern Vietnam beaches filled with kite surfers and mud
   baths, there sits a hydropower plant called Da Mi. It is no longer just
   generating power from dams and falling water, however. Crews added
   solar panels to the reservoir last year, creating what the Asian
   Development Bank called the first large floating solar project in
   Southeast Asia.

   With the project and others like it, sunny Vietnam has the region's
   largest installed capacity of solar power. Its ambitions to move to
   solar and away from coal was stymied by one issue for years, though.
   After companies installed panels to suck up power from the sun, they
   sold the energy to the state utility, without a way to push it directly
   to customers like other companies. That is about to change.

   Hanoi has enacted legislation to allow these direct sales by removing
   the state monopoly, Vietnam Electricity, as the middleman. Supporters
   hope the rules will expand the market for renewable energy,
   particularly as Vietnam considers itself among the five nations most at
   threat from climate change.Howeverit still has a love-hate relationship
   to coal, which is cheap but is also a major source of greenhouse gases
   thatmake the air unhealthy.

   "Vietnam Electricity ('EVN'), and its authorized member
   companies,nolonger the sole purchaser of electricity from solar power
   projects in Vietnam, as the definition of 'electricity purchasers'
   includes private organizations and individuals," DFDL, a law firm, said
   in a note to clients explaining the significance of the new
   legislation, Prime Ministerial Decision No. 13.

   Biggest solar farm

   Vietnam says it has the biggest solar farm in Southeast Asia,
   thoughneighborsare catching up. Nearby Indonesia included solar
   incentives in its COVID-19 recovery plan, while Myanmar called for bids
   to build solar power projects. Malaysia and Thailand had the largest
   solar capacity in the region until being overtaken by Vietnam by 2019,
   according to Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm.

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