Vietnam power and renewable markets H2 2018 summary

Vietnam maintained strong electricity demand growth of close to 10% in the first 10 months of 2018. With limited domestic natural gas and coal resources, the country has moved significantly towards imported coal in the past few years to meet its incremental demand. Despite their huge potential and the declining cost of wind and solar, renewables have been mostly limited to hydropower plants. However, in 2018, development of solar and wind projects has escalated with favourable policy announcements. Firstly, the government increased the feed-in tariff for wind projects with commercial operation before 1 November 2021. Secondly, it also approved an extension of the commercial operation date for the solar feed-in tariff until the end of 2020. Meanwhile, the MOIT has announced that the wholesale power market is ready to launch in 2019. With power supply struggling to keep pace with that of demand growth, the introduction of the wholesale electricity market will likely face headwinds.