Offshore wind, LNG-fired power projects unlikely to become operational before 2030: official

It is unlikely that offshore wind power and LNG-fired power projects become operational before 2030, said Hoang Tien Dung, head of the Electricity & Renewable Energy Authority.

Dung said this at a Monday meeting of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, under which his agency functions. The meeting focused on drafting a strategy for hydrogen production and implementing offshore wind power and gas-fired power projects per the national power development plan VIII (PDP VIII).

Noting that the deployment of such projects would take between six and eight years from their first steps, Dung called on relevant authorities to exert more efforts to speed up their progress.

A representative of PV Gas, operator of the only LNG terminal in Vietnam, said the country was yet to develop mechanisms for finance, conversion of gas prices and power prices, and offtake agreement for power output. As a result, investors were neither able to calculate capital recovery nor the amount of LNG to be imported.

Another issue was weak connections between LNG facilities and power factories, leading to wastefulness, he added.

Le Manh Hung, chairman of state-owned Petrovietnam, said the group was deploying tasks according to PDP VIII.

Referring to offshore wind power projects, he said Petrovietnam was fully capable of many tasks, thanks to similarities between offshore wind power and offshore oil-gas projects, but the group could not carry them out because the current legal framework does not allow it.

Other experts said at the meeting that Vietnam should establish a legal framework for such activities soon. Given the complexity of existing rules, such as overlaps between the laws on land, pricing, bidding and other issues, the Ministry of Industry and Trade should draft a special mechanism for such projects, they added.

Phan Duc Hieu, a standing member of the National Assembly’s Economic Committee, said at the meeting that experts of the ministry and the sector should study the issues and make recommendations so that the legal framework addresses all of them.

Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hong Dien asked relevant agencies to establish working groups with experts from ministries, sectors and localities to study the issues and recommend solutions.

In its “Global Offshore Wind Report 2023,” the Global Wind Energy Council, clarified that no “real” offshore wind project has been built in Vietnam as all projects were nearshore (intertidal) ones. “Real” offshore wind projects were expected to be built from 2028 onwards, the report said.

Vietnam plans to expand its annual hydrogen output produced by renewable energy to 100,000-200,000 tons in 2030 and 10-20 million tons in 2050, according to a draft strategy released by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The ministry emphasized that hydrogen was considered a key source to replace fossil fuel in Vietnam’s energy plan as the country strove to achieve its target of net-zero emissions by 2050.