Vietnam has no COVID deaths, and may have just said No to Coal!
Welcome to Climate Weekly!
This week, we’re in Quarantine, in Vietnam with Mai Hoang, one of the country’s youngest up-and-coming climate reporters.
Hi,
This is Mai, writing to you after 14 days in Vietnamese quarantine.
You might not know, but Vietnam is (reputedly) one of the world’s top COVID-fighters. We have recently been crowned “the biggest country without 1 Coronavirus death”, and lately, the media and the government are now grappling with some big climate decisions.
A national energy transition is all over the news, as the country considers its next 10 year government Masterplan.
The last decade’s Power Master Plan placed coal as “the future of Vietnam,” and put limits on hydropower development. Many coal projectsin the previous Master Plan ran into major funding problems as international investors divested from dirty energy. Most recently, HSBC made a strong exit from a coal plant known as Vinh Tan 3.
Incredibly, The Ministry of Industry and Trade already announced that there will be “no new coal projects planned in the next period.”
Projects delayed from the last decade could still be executed. This may still mean that Vietnam will end up with coal providing half of its energy needs by 2030, but at least the government seems unenthusiastic about raising this figure any higher.
Recent statements from the government suggest that this might all change, as the Master Plan for the next decade, may see Renewable energy and liquefied natural gas play a more prominent role. The 10 year plan is scheduled to drop by the end of this quarter.
Despite Vietnam’s impressive COVID performance, with no deaths, prominent renewable energy projects under construction such as the 30MW wind power plant in Soc Trang have been delayed till next yeardue to the pandemic.
However, a host of recent articles about the scale of climate adaptation needed over the next decade has shifted the national media debate.
Two days ago, major sources including Nhân Dân, the Communist Party’s Official Newspaper, broke the news about the Prime Minister’s new climate adaptation action plan for 2021-2030. The plan identified three major foci of action—upcoming government development projects, which shall incorporate considerations for climate change; community education and resilience initiatives; and climate disaster risk management.
No article so far looks deeply into the details and implications of the new plan, but reports on the broad strokes of the government’s goals sound optimistic.
Ca Mau, the Southernmost province of the Mekong Delta, is the only province so far to have announced a specific fund for climate adaptation according to this national plan. The plan is currently estimated to be 19 trillion Vietnamese Dong, or more than 800 million US Dollars.
Roughy 95 percent of the money comes from Official Development Assistance (ODA). This is symbolic of the increasing coupling of climate adaptation and development in Vietnam as well as donor countries. The province is a major site of the decades-long mangrove versus shrimp farming battle, which experts hope will be eased with the development of more mangrove protection areas and mangrove-friendly aquaculture activities to protect this important carbon sink.
From Climate Tracker
How has COVID-19 impacted energy reporting across Southeast Asia? Well, there’s been a big focus on affordability in the “new normal”. More from our research here
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What else we’re reading
Big shout out to our African Energy Reporting Fellow, Charles Pensulo. He just wrote a great story in the Guardian profiling Malawi’s newest President.
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3 days after reporting that Brazil’s deforestation rate had increased by 96%, lead researcher Lubia Vinhas was fired by Bolsonaro
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Photo of the Week
Check out what EU Climate Diplomacy looks like in 2020…not as glamerous as it used to be…
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