Exploring the Environment - Climate - Energy nexus
Kindly review the content below to get a clear understanding of our ongoing initiatives.
Air-Quality & Emissions Snapshot
Source: Friedlingstein, P., O’Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Peters, G. P., … & Le Quéré, C. (2023). Global Carbon Budget 2023
Vietnam CO₂ Emissions
(million tonnes of CO₂ per year, 2013 – 2022)
Source: IQAir. (2024). World Air Quality Report 2023
PM₂.₅ Pollution — Hà Nội vs National Average
(annual mean concentration, µg/m³)
Have you ever looked closely at Vietnam’s emission statistics?
Air & Climate at a Glance
Source:
IQAir. World Air Quality Report 2023 (released Mar 2024)
World Health Organization. Global Air Quality Guidelines (update 2021)
Friedlingstein P., O’Sullivan M. et al. Global Carbon Budget 2023 (Earth System Science Data, 2023)
IEA Energy Statistics Data Browser (updated 10 Jun 2025)
Every morning the story begins in the grey-blue haze that hangs over Vietnam’s largest cities - a fog we can see, smell, and breathe. Government and citizen-science monitors show that the country’s average fine-particulate (PM₂.₅) concentration now sits around 29.8 µg/m³, almost six times the new World Health Organization guideline of 5 µg/m³. Hà Nội sits in a league of its own: the capital’s 2023 mean hit 43.7 µg/m³, nine times the WHO limit and 48 % higher than the national mean. Lock-down quiet in 2020–2021 pushed city readings briefly below 36 µg/m³, but traffic, construction, and coal-fired power restored the familiar, throat-catching pall by late 2023.
Yet the murk we breathe is only the visible half of the problem. Behind it runs a steeper, invisible curve: national carbon-dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Global Carbon Budget data show Việt Nam’s fossil-fuel CO₂ output almost doubled in a single decade - from about 164 million tonnes in 2013 to roughly 330 million tonnes by 2022, with a sharp surge after 2017 as new coal plants and energy-intensive manufacturing came online. Over that period, coal-generated electricity leapt from roughly one-third to more than half of the power mix, making Việt Nam one of the fastest-growing coal consumers in Southeast Asia.
Why it matters?
Dirty air and rising greenhouse gases are, in truth, two sides of the same coin. Both are forged whenever we burn fossil fuels for electricity, mobility, cement, or steel. PM₂.₅ harms lungs, hearts, and brains in real time, shaving months sometimes years from life expectancy and driving up medical costs. CO₂, meanwhile, traps heat in the atmosphere, locking in climate risks that will endure for centuries. The longer decisive action is postponed, the higher the combined medical, economic, and planetary bill will climb.
These twin trends also point to the same remedy: an accelerated energy transition. Cutting coal and diesel, expanding renewables, and cleaning up transport not only bend the CO₂ curve toward net-zero; they slash PM₂.₅ today. In other words, every kilowatt-hour we generate or kilometre we travel without burning carbon pays an immediate dividend in clearer skies and buys time in the global race to keep warming below 1.5 °C.
Do you know which sectors cause the surge?
Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)
CO₂ and PM₂.₅ data offer only an initial perspective. The government’s Updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 2022) provides additional context. Under the “unconditional” scenario, the energy sector accounts for roughly two-thirds of national greenhouse-gas emissions and, without new measures, could approach three-quarters by 2030. The “conditional” scenario - with additional international finance and technology - projects deeper overall reductions, yet electricity, fuel and heat production remain the largest contributors in both pathways. These results indicate that actions in the energy system will be important for achieving air-quality goals and the 1.5 °C climate target.
GHG emissions (Unconditional)
Unit: Mil. tCO₂e
GHG emissions (Conditional)
Unit: Mil. tCO₂e
Source: Vietnamese Government. (2022). Viet Nam – Updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 2022). United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Why is the energy sector so dominant in Vietnam’s GHG profile?
Twenty years ago, Vietnam’s carbon ledger still fit on a small spreadsheet: half-a-million terajoules of final energy, most of it split between small workshops, motorbikes and smoky wood-fired kitchens. Fast-forward to 2022 and the bars in the NDC chart tell a very different tale - two-thirds of national greenhouse-gas emissions now flow from the energy system. The twin IEA curves explain how we got here.
Evolution of total final energy consumption in Viet Nam since 2000
Unit: TJ
Evolution of residential total final consumption by source in Viet Nam since 2000
Unit: TJ
The industrial growth spurt
Around 2005 a new skyline of steel mills, cement kilns and export-oriented factories began to rise. Each year those plants ordered more kilns, boilers and megawatts, so industrial energy use ballooned from ≈130 000 TJ to more than 850 000 TJ - a five-fold leap that now gulps over 50 % of all energy consumed. Every additional tonne of rebar or denim leaves a double CO₂ footprint: coal or fuel-oil burned on site, plus coal-fired electricity generated upstream.
The silent makeover of Vietnamese homes
In villages once perfumed by burning rice straw, wood and crop waste supplied nearly every cooking calorie. Then incomes climbed, the grid expanded and cheap appliances flooded the market. Between 2014 and 2022, “traditional biomass” in households collapsed by roughly 85 % - from about 470 000 TJ to 70 000 TJ - while electricity demand in homes surged nearly seven-times, to ≈270 000 TJ. The smoke left the kitchen, but because more than half the grid still runs on coal, its carbon simply travelled up a taller chimney.
Transport keeps the engine humming
Road freight, ride-hailing and aviation have all grown, lifting transport energy use to about 15 % of the total. It is the layer of diesel and jet fuel that thickens each year, even if it seldom grabs headlines.
Add those strands together - industrialisation, electrification and urbanisation - and every structural shift in the economy is channelled through the energy pipeline, swelling both terajoules and tonnes of CO₂. Until the fuels that power factories, vehicles and the national grid decarbonise at scale, the energy sector will not just dominate Vietnam’s emissions profile; it will keep enlarging it.
Source: IEA Energy Statistics Data Browser (updated 10 Jun 2025).
We have now sketched the demand-side surge and mapped its carbon footprint, so the next question is obvious:
How can Vietnam keep the lights on for a fast-growing economy while slashing the pollutants that darken its skies and heat its climate?
The goal is a power system that meets surging load reliably yet emits as little CO₂, SOₓ, NOₓ and PM₂.₅/PM₁₀ as possible. In principle the solution is clear - deploy far more renewable energy and flexible, low-carbon back-up. In practice it is anything but simple. Adding large volumes of wind and solar strains a grid designed around firm, dispatchable coal; it demands new transmission corridors, fast-acting reserves, smarter forecasting and market rules that reward flexibility. Every knot in that tangle belongs to what we call the energy transition.
Executing that transition starts with knowledge: a detailed, physics-based model of the power system that can test thousands of technology mixes, ramp-rate constraints and siting options under realistic demand paths. Building such a model for Vietnam is a research challenge in itself - data gaps, computational complexity and deep uncertainty over future fuel prices or renewables costs all have to be managed with transparent assumptions. In fact, these challenges persist in other research disciplines across the environment-climate-energy nexus in Vietnam.
Addressing those issues is part of CECCS’ works:
Power-system modelling & just-transition pathways – we build high-resolution simulations to pinpoint the least-cost, least-carbon generation fleets that still keep loss-of-load risk below accepted thresholds.
Offshore-wind road-mapping – Vietnam’s long coastline offers >600 GW theoretical potential, but questions about seabed lease rules, grid connection, seasonal output and local supply chains remain. We run scenario studies that test how much offshore wind the system can absorb, at what cost and under which regulatory timelines.
Rooftop-solar potential mapping – using machine-learning on satellite imagery, we estimate roof area and tilt across every district, then translate that into installable capacity and investment needs.
Long-term demand forecasting – we combine GDP, industrial structure, climate data and appliance ownership trends in multivariate time-series models, giving planners a probabilistic range of future loads instead of a single point forecast.
We also perform other studies outside the energy sector, for example:
Marine-sand resources & sustainable extraction –We survey offshore sand, gravel and shell deposits down to 30 m water depth along the South-Central coast (Da Nang → Binh Thuan), quantify their construction-grade reserves and model the ecological impacts of dredging. The goal is to propose “green” dredging technologies that can supply the building sector without worsening coastal erosion or habitat loss, easing the shortage of river sand highlighted in recent years.
While each work addresses a different aspect of the environment–climate–energy nexus, the goal is to conduct rigorous studies that illuminate on persisting issues and develop technologically and economically feasible solutions for them. We’re looking to onboard team members who can play a part in our jouney to achieving those goals.
Contact Us
If you are interested in collaboration in the fields of environment, energy, or sustainable development, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I welcome opportunities to work together.