Vietnam, Denmark to strengthen green growth times

Vietnam and Denmark have boosted bilateral green growth cooperation towards achieving net-zero emission goals, with some corporate deals signed during a working visit to Vietnam by Danish Crown Prince Frederik.

Frederik was accompanied by representatives of nearly 40 Danish companies and three investment funds - the Danish government’s IFU, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), and EKF.

During his November 1-3 visit, Frederik shared his ideas about sustainable development and said he was impressed with Vietnam's efforts to meet its commitments to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050.

On Wednesday, the crown prince and his delegation visited Hai Phong, an industrial hub in the north, where renewable Danish energy giant Orsted is speeding up preparations to build a 3,900-megawatt offshore wind farm with investment estimated at between $11.9 billion and $13.6 billion.

A day earlier, Orsted signed a memorandum of understanding with Doosan Vina, the Vietnamese subsidiary of Korean company Doosan Enerbiity on cooperation for the supply of offshore wind turbine substructures.

Under the MoU, Doosan Vina will supply monopile foundations, which are substructures of offshore wind turbines, for Orsted’s global offshore wind power projects that are underway in Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.

Doosan Vina CEO Kim Hyo Tae said: “Through this partnership with Orsted, we plan to expand our foothold in not only the Vietnamese offshore wind power market, which is forecast to grow to 7 gigawatts by 2030, but a wider global wind power market.”

Also Tuesday, Orsted and its Vietnamese renewables partner T&T Group signed with the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment’s National Innovation Center (NIC) a five-year cooperation agreement to enhance technical capacity and build technological expertise in Vietnam’s offshore wind sector.

The goal of this initiative is to launch an offshore wind R&D and training center under Hanoi-headquartered NIC.

Another cooperation agreement was signed Tuesday between Danish power company Hyme Energy and Vietnam’s Power Engineering Consulting JSC 2 (PECC2) to develop thermal energy storage projects.

The agreement includes a target of developing at least 2 gigawatts-hour of storage by 2030 and at least 6 GWh by 2035. The deployment of large-scale storage will help to integrate sustainable energy production and stabilize the Vietnamese electrical grid in the future.

The two parties will also collaborate in other fields to develop a Vietnamese supply chain.

During Crown Prince Frederik’s Vietnam visit, Denmark’s Copenhagen Offshore Partners, a global leader in offshore wind development, opened a new office in Hanoi.

The company, COP, is the wind power development and construction unit of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, one of the world’s largest fund managers of investments in green energy infrastructure. CIP is investing in the 3.5 GW La Gan offshore wind project in Binh Thuan province, south-central Vietnam. The project would cost about $10.5 billion, it is estimated.