Vietnam’s National Green Growth Strategy establishes a vision for advancing low emission, climate resilient development and encourages all Vietnamese provinces to develop their own green growth action plans. Thanh Hoa, a province located along Vietnam’s north central coast and a priority region for economic growth, is an early leader in developing a green growth action plan. In particular, the provincial government’s establishment of a Green Growth Task Force (GGTF) in 2014 laid the foundation for critical leadership and action at the subnational level. The GGTF partnered with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Low Emission Asia Development (LEAD) and Vietnam Forests and Deltas (VFD) programs to design and develop Thanh Hoa’s Green Growth Action Plan.

Scaling up clean energy is an essential part of green growth in Vietnam and around the world. Within this context, the GGTF decided to include renewable energy targets in its Green Growth Action plan to guide long-term planning and investment. To inform realistic yet achievable renewable energy targets, the GGTF partnered with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) under the U.S. Government’s Enhancing Capacity for Low Emission Development Strategies (EC-LEDS) program to assess wind, solar, and biomass energy potential in the context of existing and planned infrastructure, environmental and energy security considerations, and other policy objectives.

By introducing a tool and analytical framework to analyze renewable energy potential under a variety of constraints, this partnership supported the GGTF in developing data-driven renewable energy targets to evaluate and put forth in the Green Growth Action Plan.