NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

By Tim Daubach

Vietnam’s thriving wind energy market is, without doubt, among this year’s biggest success stories for renewables to emerge from Southeast Asia, a region that has long resisted the global trend away from fossil fuels.

With its economy ballooning and its population among the world’s most climate-vulnerable, the country has made great strides to boost wind power to keep pace with soaring energy needs and bring down carbon emissions, introducing more ambitious wind power targets than any other Southeast Asian state and policies that have attracted investors from all over the world.

With foreign capital flows into Vietnam on the rise, the country is forecast to install 1 GW of onshore and offshore wind capacity by 2021, up from the current 327MW, surpassing even Thailand—at present Southeast Asia’s front-runner in installed wind capacity. Vietnam is also the only state in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to have developed offshore wind, with 99 MW already in place.