New Energy for Economic Development

Energy is one of essential needs of human beings and is an indispensable input of economic activities. When people's living standards are higher and economic production levels are more modern, the demand for energy will grow up. The satisfaction of these needs is really a challenge for most countries.

 

The electricity production in Vietnam in the past 20 years averagely grows as high as 12-13 percent a year, nearly doubling the GDP growth. The speedy industrialization and growth maintenance strategy, aimed at realising the objective of "a prosperous people, powerful country" and avoiding the risk of lagging behind, will shoulder these important tasks on the electricity sector in the next decades. To accomplish these great responsibilities, the power sector must be able to forecast power demand of the economy to outline development plans and improve their capabilities for new tasks. Apart from future electricity development policies and strategies, one new direction for the power sector is to find new energy sources, especially clean and renewable energy sources. To date, we have only started with these sources while other countries have widely utilised them for a long time.

 

Currently, three technologies are most widely applicable, including pressurized water reactors (PWR) - accounting for some 60 percent, boiling water reactors (BWR) - with 21 percent, and Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactors - with some 10 percent. More and more countries have chosen or returned to the nuclear power development programmes. World-leading experts asserted that if nuclear energy is not developed, mankind cannot solve the energy problems. Upcoming trends of nuclear power technology development are driven by higher specifications of safety, economical competitiveness, easy-to-build and easy-to-operate features and radioactive waste reduction.

 

For our country, although primary energy potentials are diverse, with rapid economic growth rate and low per capita electricity consumption, it is very, very difficult for us to meet the fast-growing power demand in the future. To make Vietnam as a basically industrialised country by 2020, the construction of nuclear power plants is an optimal solution, helping diversify primary energy sources, satisfy electric energy demand in the future, strengthen energy security, enhanced scientific and technological capacity, develop infrastructure system, accelerate the development of many industries and other economic sectors, reduce polluting emissions (dust, CO2, SOx, NOx ...) from fossil fuels, and other benefits.

 

Lying in a subtropical monsoon climate and having its long coastline, Vietnam holds special advantage in developing wind-to-power energy. Compared with the average wind speed in the East Sea of Vietnam and surrounding regions, the wind in the East Sea is relatively strong and seasonally changeable. Vietnam is also considered having the largest wind-to-power potentials compared with other regional countries like Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

 

While up to 8.6 percent of Vietnam's territory is assessed to have from “good” to “very good” potentialities for construction of large-scaled wind power plants, the viable area for Cambodia is 0.2 percent; Laos, 2.9 percent; and Thailand, only 0.2 percent. The total capacity of wind power potentialities is estimated at 513,360 MW, an equivalent of more than 200 Son La hydropower plants, and more than 10 times of the country’s power industry capacity in 2020 forecast by the power sector. If taking standards of building small-scale wind mills for local economic development into consideration, up to 41 percent of Vietnam’s rural area can develop this form of electric generator, compared with 6 percent in Cambodia, 13 percent tin Laos, and 9 percent in Thailand.

 

Amongst most outstanding advantages, wind mills do not use fuels, do not to cause environmental pollution like other types of power plants, are easy to choose locations with small land areas required unlike hydroelectric power plants which can be only built on strong water currents, attached to special conditions, including very large areas for reservoirs.

 

Wind mills can be located near places of consumers; thus, they help cut off construction costs for transmission lines. Today, wind power becomes very popular, equipment is in mass production and technologies are very modern; hence, costs for a wind power station are a quarter of 1986.

 

Wind mills can be placed in different locations and positions, with very flexible and diverse solutions. Coastal facilities usually generate more electricity than those in landlocked ones because wind forces are stronger in coastal areas. Coastal production is more cost-effective because it is easier to transport heavy structures at sea and construction area is more economical. With a 3,000 km long coastline, Vietnam can generate billions of kWh of wind power a year.

 

Mountain cliffs and deserted hills, which are unusable for industrial and agricultural purposes, can be used for installing wind power stations. In these cases, we do not need to build high supports, thus saving considerable construction costs.

 

To sum up, in a near future, roles of new energy sources in the national economy will increase. They will be a strong impetus for Vietnam’s economy to move forward sustainably.