Another day of great memories in Vietnam. Today kicked off similar to yesterday with a guest lecture followed by language class at UEF. The guest lecture today was about sustainability and Vietnams approach to global warming. Vietnam is one of the most susceptible nations to climate change as it has a vast very long coast line. This make this issue very important to the country. A lot of what was discussed was renewable sources of energy, as our lecturer had previously build and consulted on several renewable energy projects in Vietnam. There is a net-zero emission goal in place for the year 2025. It was also very interesting to hear of the foreign investment/promotion of these renewable energy projects. We talked about a visit from president Biden to the head of the communist party in Vietnam(the highest ranking government official). We also learned how our guest lecturer worked with former Secretary of State John Kerry on renewable energy projects in Vietnam. It interesting to see the US’s involvement in Vietnam for this issue. This then coincided perfectly with our site visit of the day, PECC2, one of the largest energy providers, consultants, and developers in Vietnam.

At first I wasn’t too sure what exactly PECC2 was. It seemed like they did one thing but then they also would be doing something else. What I come to find was they do pretty much do it all when it comes to energy. They consult, construct, provide, and operate power plants all throughout Vietnam. Their focus on renewable source was a point of intrigue. Currently Vietnam is powered mostly by coal. However, that is changing. We saw many of the projects PECC2 has worked on and operates and there is a big focus on renewables. They have many hydro eclectic plants, wind farms, solar farms, and more. They are even working on developing hydrogen power and bringing it to Vietnam. This big focus on renewable source is great, and help Vietnam protect itself for the future. It also helps meet the net-zero goal we learned about earlier in the day. Another very interesting part was their safety measure. We toured one of their control rooms where they remotely control tons of plants all over Vietnam. They told us the they can remotely shut a plant down there if any problems arise. This was all very interesting.

Overall it was a great pairing of lecture and visit today. We learned of Vietnams goals and actions in the morning and they saw how it’s happening in the country. Its very cool to see a developing country be so high-tech and forward thinking about these issues. This lesson also gave me some insight into the Vietnamese stock market as PECC2 is a traded company in Vietnam. This ties perfectly into our visit tomorrow at Vina Capital. So I will save that for then!