Minister Nguyen Hong Dien presents a souvenir to UK Ambassador Gareth Ward. (Photo: congthuong.vn)

The working meeting aimed to set the groundwork for the visit to Vietnam by Mr. Alok Sharma, United Nations President on climate change, on May 28.

During the meeting, Minister Nguyen Hong Dien said that in 2019 - 2020, Vietnam witnessed a strong development of renewable energy, especially solar and wind power. Specifically, more than 16.5GW of solar power capacity was connected to the national grid. “If 20.6 GW of hydropower was included, the installed capacity of electricity from renewable energy in Vietnam accounted for 55.17% of the national installed capacity,” he added.

According to the minister, Vietnam is continuing to implement the National Program on Economical and Efficient Use of Energy, phase 3 to 2030. With the goal of promoting the energy industry to develop quickly and sustainably, fully meeting the needs of the energy sector. Meeting the development needs of the economy and people's lives, ensuring national energy security, Vietnam continues to create the most favorable environment to attract investment capital from domestic and foreign investors into the energy industry. In particular, encouraging the development of renewable energy sources and promoting economical and efficient use of energy is the consistent direction of the Government of Vietnam in the development of the energy sector.

At the same time, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has been developing policies, implementing tasks and solutions to promote the structural transformation of the energy industry towards promoting internal resources, and enhancing cooperation with development partners. The multilateral and bilateral cooperation mechanisms are very important to the development of the energy sector and the national economy of Vietnam. Therefore, Minister Nguyen Hong Dien highly appreciated the initiative on energy transition by the UK to support developing countries to gradually reduce dependence on fossil energy, gradually increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the structure of national energy supply.

Welcoming the policy of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ambassador Gareth Ward said that energy is the main cause of climate change. In Vietnam, the energy sector contributes 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Vietnam is a typical country in the world today that has a fast development speed and needs to use a lot of electricity for development. Therefore, it is essential that Vietnam find a way to develop quickly and sustainably. In the next 10 years, Vietnam needs to invest about USD130 billion in green energy.

Minister Nguyen Hong Dien affirmed that Vietnam's top concern is technology, engineering and governance.

As United Nations President on Climate Change, Mr. Alox Sharma will visit Vietnam and have a working session with 50 businesses, including Vietnamese and British businesses and some other foreign enterprises on investment in clean energy. The UK Ambassador expressed his hope that the Vietnamese Government could send representatives to participate and discuss with businesses./.

Compiled by BTA