Vietnam – Just Transition Initiative

Summary

“This study analyzes the social aspects and political feasibility of an energy transition in Vietnam, identifies four main barriers to the country’s progress toward a socially just energy transition, and provides recommendations for how to achieve this.

The authors note Vietnam’s vulnerability to climate change and the opportunities and challenges involved in reaching its climate goals through a just energy transition. Vietnam’s progress toward energy efficiency has seen numerous institutional challenges, including insufficient and ineffective policies, complex procedures for investing in renewable energy, economic and financial barriers, and poor human capacity in the energy sector. Each of these obstacles harms public perceptions of renewable energy.

To address these challenges, the authors suggest various energy sector reforms: draft a new long-term energy vision, shift investment focus, improve state-owned enterprises’ transparency and regulations, and adopt new fiscal policies that promote renewable energy. To improve public perceptions, they also suggest conducting more capacity building, community outreach, and policy dialogues.”

Summary

This report discusses the various stakeholder narratives of “just energy transitions” and their claims to justice. The authors promote transformative alliances among these stakeholders to align their sustainable development strategies. They offer a set of eight principles to encourage and assess justice dimensions of energy transition processes in developing countries.

Using the proposed principles and their respective indicators, the authors evaluate twelve countries: China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam, Fiji, Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Mexico. These countries were identified based on justice terminology within their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. Performance among these countries was generally strongest in terms of their ambitious targets regarding climate and the alignment of their NDCs with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. These countries generally scored lower with respect to the socioeconomic dimension—such as ensuring or fostering “decent work and resilience,” “social equity,” and “gender equality”—and even lower in regard to the political dimension.

The paper concludes that countries claiming to be pioneers of just energy transitions do not necessarily perform better in terms of the social and political dimension, nor do those who claim to be pioneers regarding justice necessarily lead when it comes to climate ambition. The authors offer recommendations specific to each of the twelve countries and conclude with broadly applicable policy recommendations to better apply justice to energy transitions.