Offshore Wind in Vietnam – Harnessing the Country’s Potential

A growing number of domestic and international developers are increasingly exploring Vietnam’s offshore wind opportunities, with a pipeline of larger-scale deep-water offshore wind projects to potentially come online in the foreseeable future. The World Bank has recently concluded that Vietnam could see an increase in offshore wind power capacity of between 11 to 25GW by 2035, depending on the government’s success in formulating and implementing the necessary policies to grow the industry. Vietnam currently has 18 offshore wind projects in operation, all of which are located in nearshore waters. 

Reform and clear policy formulation are needed, but with sufficient political will it is not inconceivable that this could occur relatively quickly, and whilst not always perfect, Vietnam does have a recent track-record in implementing such reforms to catalyse its renewables sector – offshore wind represents the next major frontier. The growing number of development stage projects led by both domestic and “household name” foreign investors is encouraging, and with the release of PDP8 imminent, and COP 27 later this year, the market is expected to continue to attract significant investor interest.

In this article, Ben Thompson, David Harrison and Matthew Chow look at the latest developments in offshore wind, as well as the key challenges and opportunities inherent in developing large-scale offshore wind power projects in the Vietnamese market.

This article was originally published in PFI and is reproduced with permission.