Today after some unfortunate, but not severe, injuries to a cornea, we went to Power Engineering Consulting Company 2 for a tour. They told us about not only what they did, but also about some government initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint and shift to green energy.

The first of the government initiatives that stood out to me was the goal of putting 50 percent of all buildings on localized solar power and not reliant on the national grid by 2030. This seems like a big number to achieve but would be impressive. They then told us that most houses in Ho Chi Minh city already have their own solar panels, so reaching that milestone isn’t as impossible as it first sounded. Another initiative is to reduce CO2 output to 37 million tons/year by 2050. These goals are impressing me and showing me that many parts of the world are pitching in to help stop climate change, and not just the countries with massive GDPs.

PECC is a green energy company working to achieve these goals for the Vietnamese government, but when I think clean energy, the first thing I think of is hydroelectricity. This is why I was surprised to learn that PECC2 will not be pursuing the construction of any more dams. They informed us that dam construction causes many environmental issues that other renewable energies can avoid. The reservoir of a dam has to take up a lot of land, destroying any plants and ecosystems in the area and displacing any people living there. Dams also cut the flow of the river for things like fish and silt. They are instead pursuing solar, wind, and green hydrogen.

The most impressive thing of the whole operation to me was the remote control of the power plants. They have an office that has remote oversight of all of the breakers at each of their facilities and tracks what is happening there live. This is reducing their manpower cost by condensing the work of 5 locations into one.