For this day in Vietnam, we started our day off with a lecture regarding Vietnam’s clean energy initiatives and future goals. This lecture was presented by a professor with over thirty years of industry experience. He extensible covered his work experience and education with several pictures of him with important people like John Carey. I really enjoyed his lecture because he obviously spoke with deep personal experience on all aspects of Vietnam’s electric production. Meeting with industry experts is extremely helpful for gaining a meaningful understanding of a topic as complex as sustainable energy in Vietnam.
Our morning lecture was tied into something practical when we visited the Power Construction Consulting Joint Stock Company 2 (PECC2). They primarily work in design and powerplant management for renewable energy plants all over Vietnam. We toured their gorgeous office in Ho Chi Minh City where we were treated to several presentations on their operations. Firstly they described the government’s sustainability goals to increase the share of Vietnamese power that is produced sustainably. According to them, Vietnam is aggressively setting targets to increase the amount of energy from wind farms and solar panels (both private and in plants). I found this to be very interesting from the perspective of how much they are actually accomplishing. It is easy to set guidelines, but they presented a great amount of data suggesting that Vietnam might be able to meet aggressive sustainability goals. I found that to be fairly inspiring considering that Vietnam could be a global example in this field. Ecological damage and pollution a very popular topics, but enacting change in countries like Vietnam is at the forefront of the issue. Specifically, PECC2 and companies like it are doing their best to move away from dirty fossil fuel-based energy and into renewable or net carbon-neutral sources of energy.
