$102-million project to help Vietnam improve energy efficiency

Launch workshop and training Vietnam Energy Efficiency for Industrial Enterprises project

The World Bank and Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) yesterday launched a $102-million project to support industrial enterprises to adopt energy-efficiency technologies and practices.

Under this project, industrial enterprises can access a new line of credit to fund their purchases of energy-efficiency and production-optimisation technologies, thus reducing energy consumption and production costs and increasing their overall competitiveness in the domestic and international markets.

With this project, financial institutions and industrial enterprises will be able to prepare, evaluate, and appraise energy efficiency projects. This will create a new line of business for financing institutions, providing loans to support industrial energy-efficiency investments, which will enable them to scale up energy-efficiency lending to industries.

“The government has made strong efforts over the last few years to develop policies and regulations to promote energy efficiency in all sectors,” said Ousmane Dione, the World Bank’s country director for Vietnam.

He added, “The Vietnamese energy sector is facing many challenges due to limited domestic energy resources and high electricity demand to support economic growth. In this context, implementing and scaling up energy efficiency investments will bring multiple benefits, such as improving the competitiveness of the Vietnamese industrial sector, reducing GHG emissions, and avoiding the need for investments in new coal-fired power generation.”

Funding under this project will be provided to participating financial institutions, which will then lend to industrial enterprises to invest in energy-efficient subprojects.