Renewable Energy in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) of Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the countries that is having high potential for renewable energy (RE). The available renewable energy sources are small hydropower, wind, biomass, solar energy, geothermal, and tidal. The Government has introduced a National Action Plan for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and it is expected that RE development will help to achieve the targets of the Action Plan. This chapter reviews the roles of RE in achieving the national goals of sustainable development and the targets of the nationally determined contribution (NDC) of Vietnam. It is found that although there are several legal policies on the development of RE in Vietnam, these policies are unsystematic, insufficient, and less supportive for promoting such development. Vietnam has not yet made any detailed assessment of the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of all RE sources, and the importance of the link between energy-environment and clean development has not been highlighted. Moreover, the overall technology infrastructure for RE development in Vietnam is still lacking. Thus, in order to achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the NDC, Vietnam will need to take strong actions in all aspects, in which RE is considered to be a “multi-target arrow,” which take into account the direct and indirect contributions from the RE.