Despite Vietnam’s solar boom and ambitious climate targets, the fast-growing economy is struggling to quit dirty energy — leaving one of the world’s biggest coal power programmes largely intact.
During the COP26 climate summit last year, the government boldly promised to end the construction of new coal plants and phase out the dirtiest of those already running, even as energy demands soar in the manufacturing powerhouse.
“But this is not actually what Vietnam is doing at a national level,” Nandini Das, an energy research and policy analyst at Climate Analytics, told AFP. Vietnam pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.—AFP
