The Vietnamese government has pared back its 2030 target for installed coal-fired capacity, although imported-coal-fired generation capacity is still expected to more than triple.
Vietnam is now targeting 37.3 gigawatts (GW) of installed coal capacity by 2030, according to the latest draft of the government’s long-term electricity development plan published in February, down from a previous target of 55.3 GW.
In the government’s base scenario, imported coal-fired capacity will increase by 14.2 GW to 20.4 GW over 2020-2030, with capacity running on domestic supply rising more slowly by 2.7 GW to 17 GW.
There are six 600-MW imported-coal-fired units schedule for completion by 2022, according to Vietnam’s draft electricity plan. A 3.6-GW rise is equivalent to 7 million tons of NAR 5,800 kcal/kg coal consumption annually.
The remaining 13.3 GW of prospective plants to run on imported and domestic coal are at earlier stages of development, with some projects still at the pre-construction stage.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade published a low, medium and high-generation forecast scenario for electricity output to 2030 in its latest long-term plan. National electricity production is expected to increase to 513.5 TWh, 551.3 TWh or 595.4 TWh, respectively, by 2030 in the three scenarios, from 227 TWh in 2019.
The government has laid out plans to nearly double the country’s installed generation capacity to 137.7 GW by 2030 from 69.3 GW in 2020 in its base scenario, to cope with the expected surge in power demand.
In that scenario, Vietnam’s increase in installed imported-coal-fired capacity to around 20.4 GW would represent a 6% point increase in coal’s share of total capacity to 15% by 2030.
But the share of capacity running on domestic coal will gradually decrease to 12% from 21% during the same period.
