SK Ecoplant aims for bigger footing in Vietnam’s solar market

South Korea’s energy and environmental solutions provider SK Ecoplant is taking steps to enlarge its presence in Vietnam’s solar panel market as the Southeast Asian country strives to become carbon neutral by 2050.

The company on Monday announced the completion of a 1MW solar panel rooftop for a plant owned by Samil Vina, a Vietnam-based textile exporter based in the southern province of Dong Nai.

The plant will consume all the energy generated at the site, without need to build an additional power grid, SK Ecoplant said in the release, adding that the use of renewable energy is requested by Samil Vina’s customers.

SK Ecoplant plans to expand the supply of self-consumption rooftop solar power generation facilities in Vietnamese industrial complexes that require a stable power supply.

Besides the recently completed project, the firm is carrying out others totaling nearly 7 MW in the southern industrial provinces of Dong Nai and Binh Duong, and Hai Phong city in the north.

With this project, SK Ecoplant hopes to secure carbon emissions credits, it said. SK Ecoplant completed registration for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Vietnam in 2021. CDM is one of the emission-reduction measures and a project to secure carbon emissions credits from the UN by implementing greenhouse gas reduction projects.

Topsun, a Korean company in which SK Ecoplant invested in 2022, will supply the solar modules. Topsun and SK Ecoplant also have partners in projects such as the Concho solar power plant in Texas and a direct power purchase agreement with SK Hynix.

“It is also expected to have the effect of solidifying SK Ecoplant's position in Vietnam's renewable energy market, which has high potential,” the firm noted.

"Vietnam is a place where the demands for stable power supply and carbon reduction coexist due to economic growth and industrial development," said Kim Jung-hun, SK Ecoplant's managing director.

In March, SK Ecoplant, formerly SK Engineering & Construction Co., entered into an agreement with BCG Energy, a subsidiary of Bamboo Capital Group and a top-tier renewable energy company in Vietnam's, to produce 700 MW of renewable energy in the Southeast Asian country.

Also on Monday, SK Ecoplant and compatriot company Sudokwon Landfill Site Management Corp inked an agreement with BCG Energy to implement waste-to-power projects in southern Vietnam. The pact partly implements the March agreement.