Representatives of Vietnamese Ministries such as Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Planning and Investment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government Office and Vietnam Electricity attended the meeting. From the United States’ Delegation side, Mr. Ted Osius, the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, and representatives of some enterprises and universities of the U.S. joined the meeting.
In the discussion with Mr. Nguyen Van Binh, Mr. John Kerry confirmed that USA is willing to support Vietnam in fighting against climate change, particularly in developing clean energy sources, sustainable infrastructures, intelligent management of water resource and other resources in the ecological system.
Mr. John Kerry assumed that with such a fast growing economy, Vietnam would need more power generation facilities fueled by clean energy sources. Production cost of renewable energy sources is seen to steadily decline by 9 - 12% every year and will be lower, for example solar energy cost in the U.S. has dramatically dropped from USD 4,500 /kWh in 2009 to USD 1,420/kWh in 2016.
Mr. John Kerry made a comparison: construction of a coal fired thermal power plant normally takes between 4 and 6 years, but it takes only 1 year to build up a solar or wind power station. Therefore, Vietnam should shift to new energy sources like renewable energy. The Head of the Central Economic Commission stressed that Vietnam always attaches much importance to energy security and considers it as an utmost objective in the energy development strategy and policies of Vietnam.
Vietnam wishes to effectively utilize domestic primary energy sources in combination with appropriate power and fuel imports in order to diversify primary energy sources for power generation, prioritize renewable energy development, create a breakthrough in attaining the national energy security, contribute to preservation of energy resources and mitigation of adverse impacts on the environment during the power generation process.
Vietnam will continue pursuing a low carbon economy, concentrate on developing renewable energy such as wind power, solar energy, and change the existing production and consumption models towards sustainable development. Vietnam will keep performing these solutions in the future in order to achieve the national energy security.
Vietnam will mobilize all the domestic and international resources for power development to secure sufficient electricity supply with better and better quality and reasonable prices to serve the national socio – economic development; diversely and efficiently utilize primary energy sources for power generation; promote renewable energy development for power generation, gradually increasing the proportion of electricity generated from renewable energy sources, contributing to energy security, climate change mitigation, environmental protection and sustainable development.
At the end of the dialogue, Vietnam highly appreciated and agreed upon Mr. John Kerry’s proposal on cooperatively studying and developing renewable energy in Vietnam.