Like a snake eating its own tail, here in the Netherlands we also have areas where companies are asked to reduce energy usage. There's even cases of companies or entire new neighbourhoods not being able to be attached to the grid.
Yeah, that is what chronic under-investment of the grid combined with a labor shortage will get you. I sincerely hope our government will be able to resolve these matters.
> Despite the historic usage of wind power to drain water and grind grain, the Netherlands today lags 21 of the 26 other member states of the European Union in the consumption of energy from renewable sources.
With how windy the whole Netherlands is I'd have expected it to be doing much better in wind power generation, seems like the oil lobby from Shell is eating the whole country's energy future...
Edit: quite unexpected to get downvotes, is it the mention of Shell causing some issue? Because I believe it's a big reason for a massive off-shore wind potential to go untapped until around 2020.
I suspect it's a land usage problem as well. But they've not kept up with Denmark in offshore wind, and I'm sure they could do more with rooftop solar (like most places).
Being an entirely flat country is very bad for hydropower.
Rooftop solar is huge in Holland because they still allow the users to detract their delivered kWhs from their bill. Regardless of the price at that time. It's called "salderen".
This makes deploying solar panels highly cost effective but it basically makes daytime summer power so ubiquitous that they're having a hard time using it up. And on a global scale it's a waste of resources because Holland doesn't get an awful lot of sun.
Meanwhile in Spain almost nobody has panels because they only get the momentary value which is not worth it during sunny tints unless you use it to run your own AC.
Yeah, we turn into cavemen, and let china, russia, iran, etc become greater than us because they won't restrict their power usage. The "green" strategy #self-destruction
The Netherlands is the opposite of "self-destruction", a large part of it is self-created and has coped with what the sea throws at it for centuries. Sometimes the sea wins and a new wetland preserve like the Biesbosch is created but mostly the Dutch win. The trend of ca. 18-30 cm of sea level rise per century (between 1.8 and 2.9 mm/year in a near straight line since measurements began in 1890 with a slight increase since 2000) lies well within what Dutch sea defences can manage.
The power situation in the North is a significant issue, but fixable with the right roadmap for capacity planning.
The way bigger issue now is the fact that To Lam is now president (#2 in Vietnam) and being positioned for the top seat in 2026. Oh and he'll continue to be Minister of Public Security as well.
It's the equivalent of making the Head of the KGB the next head of the USSR.
To Lam and the faction that backed him are much more ambivalent of market economics than the faction that lost the game of thrones going on the past few years, and he is EXTREMELY authoritarian in how he handles governance (he was the butcher of Gia Lai).
This is basically the same game of thrones we saw in China in 2011-14 happening in VN.
Already my SO's friends who run medical practices and clinics in Saigon are getting hit this past month by "anti-corruption" investigations that are basically a blatant attempt at extracting bribes - which was always an issue but never as blatant as the last few weeks.
Lots of medical groups do bad stuff in VN, but the laws were also made to maximize bribe taking on the regulators end - for example, Nitrous Oxide is an illegal anesthesia, despite being openly available and abused in the party scene in VN, along with the fact that regulations around clinic sizes were purposely made so it's essentially impossible for any clinic to be following building code, and lots of doctors have been laid off the last few weeks because government docs get paid horribly ($200-300/mo) so everyone moonlights. And now most clinics are cutting staff or shutting down.
Oh and Medical Education is no longer free - they're now charging $6k/yr for medical education in a country where your average household income might be half that and unlike the PH or Indonesia (countries with a similar GDP per Capita and HDI) there isn't a strong professionalized local lending and mortgage scene.
I wouldn't go that far yet. There's still 2 more years before the GenSec is chosen in 2026, the Army detests the MPS, and unlike China, Vietnam is actually vulnerable to economic competition within most of ASEAN or India and leadership recognizes that. Then again, a faction of leadership might call it quits and push for a more authoritarian future because they are extremely paranoid about a Color Revolution.
But I do think GDP growth will slow to the 4-6% range over the next decade because even though VN's GDP per Capita is relatively high, the VN market is way less developed than Indonesia or Phillipines, let alone Thailand, Malaysia, or China and unlike China in the 1990s it doesn't have a MASSIVE consumer population to justify the headaches (eg. the article above).
The average VNese definitely has a lower standard of living than your average Indonesian or Pinoy based on my travels in all 3, and consumer spending is morose (it's comparable to Cambodia and Laos).
That said, if To Lam and MPS successfully control the Vietnamese Politburo, it's game over. There's no reason to invest in VN over PH, IND, TH, or IN if the technocrats we had relationships with are all in jail or trying to buy property in OC and leave.
No worries! That's a good way to operate on the internet! Best to default assume it's all BS. And in all honesty, I have gotten lazy with citations recently.
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For the medical anti-corruption crackdown, I don't have a source I can share other than hectic Zalo group chats of our friends asking us for last minute cash infusions as well as my SO's network back in VN, as well as her cousin's tuition hike at UMP after they changed the entire curriculum in the last 2 years (Edit: was lazy, I found it. 2024 [https://tuoitre.vn/truong-dai-hoc-y-duoc-tp-hcm-tang-hoc-phi...] versus 2022 [https://amp.laodong.vn/tuyen-sinh/hoc-phi-cac-truong-y-duoc-...] - they 6Xed tuition in just 2 years from $500/sem to $3k/sem)
For the To Lam and larger "anti-corruption" saga, it's been a rolling saga since the Viet A scandal. I'd use these though:
Generally I view things like this as under-investment in energy provision, rather than 'overusage' by businesses.
There was story last year in the UK, where the power usage of data centres in west London were blamed for a lack of housing development. This turned out not to be true and an exercise in blame-shifting [1]
Two random thoughts from visiting vietnam and talking with people
* in large parts of the country, there is just sun at least half of the year, yet solar power is basically non-existent, basically all (edit: not all, but most) is coal. if renewables are so great, why are there no solar panels anywhere, in a country that is all sun? I saw some wind turbines in the central mountains at least
* a lot of electricity is used on ACs, every house has at least one AC - how did people live before ACs were invented? can't imagine
Land procurement is annoying in VN, and most of the large scale infra is basically built by private players because local government is not the most capable.
Also, it is mostly mountainous
> how did people live before ACs were invented
Start the day very early, take a siesta, and living in traditional houses to minimize the sun while also getting plenty of airflow.
Edit:
Listen to leduyquang753. His answer is much deeper and accurate than my broad strokes one.
There used to be a solar program in Vietnam, which made everyone jump onto the bandwagon. Lack of infrastructure planning, however, meant all of that solar energy could overpower the grid, and so the program has been stopped. To date, one can install their own solar system, but the electricity would be bought by the government at a price of zero, and they cannot sell it to anyone else.
> how did people live before ACs were invented? can't imagine
They lived simpler lives with less mental work that required concentration.
Lee Kuan Yew, the man credited with transforming Singapore into a modern, developed country, is quoted as saying:
"Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency."
"how did people live before ACs were invented? can't imagine"
You can tell from the fact that Florida was almost empty, just half a million people in 1900. It didn't grow too much until about 1950 (2.8 million), when the population started to soar - through immigration, not by having a wild birthrate. Nowadays, 23 million, and more are coming every day, even though the place is notorious for its hurricanes.
> how did people live before ACs were invented? can't imagine
There's the part where people were more resistant to heat one way or another (either they were more used to it, or they made adjustments and had better coping mechanisms, or both).
The other part is the gradual change in climate and environement where it might have gotten way worse than before. For instance having houses with bigger windows/worse insulation, more pollution pushing people to close their windows, more asphalt/less heat dissipation, more humidity and sheer temperatures raising.
I speculate, but there might also be a part where simply more people suffered from heat strokes in the past when extreme temperatures occurred. So part of the answer of "how did people live before ACs were invented?" is that some didn't.
My observation is that Vietnamese people know about the risk of heat stroke and how to avoid it.
You won’t see people walking around outside during the hottest hours (9am to 5pm). People are in the shade, avoid physical activity.
There are some manual laborers working outside at those hours, but they are covered from head to toe to protect against the sun and take frequent breaks in the shade.
But heat tolerance is real. Many people live without AC, and even those with it often won’t use it except for the hottest few days of the year.
It will be 35C with 50% humidity (41C heat index) and they aren’t sweating.
I don't doubt that general heat tolerance isn't real for the healthy part of the population. However the hottest days could hit elderly and unhealthy people especially hard (or even the healthy, if it's especially hot).
> Many people live without AC, and even those with it often won’t use it except for the hottest few days of the year.
> Viet Nam leads Southeast Asia in share of low-carbon generation (42%), primarily from hydro (29%). From 2015 to 2023, solar and wind grew tenfold to 13% of electricity generation, on a par with the global average and exceeding peers like Thailand (4.7%) and the Philippines (3.2%).
Vietnam's problems are not technical, the lack of energy is a symptom of social and political problems, and can be solved easily once the cause has been addressed.
While I'm not a full market evangelist, I do wonder why there isn't an escalating cost curve put in place for situations like this. Surely they'd be much happier paying slightly more for reliable electricity?
There just isn’t the electrical capacity plus it’s a communist country so while private businesses can exist, the government isn’t exactly know for its dynamic approach in using market forces for resource allocation so a buyer can pay more to secure power instead of another customer.
VN is "Communist" the same way the DPRK is "Democratic".
In action it's a Wild West capitalist authoritarian state.
They've been a market economy since 1986.
> the government isn’t exactly know for its dynamic approach in using market forces for resource allocation so a buyer can pay more to secure power instead of another customer
This isn't it. The issue is the capacity doesn't exist. Vietnam was in a state of war from 1939-1990, and infrastructure is creaky.
Most of the infra that exists now was built in the last 15 years by private players, and private players are hesitant to put money in right now due to the game of thrones and VN's China influenced Zero-Covid policy a couple years ago.
> VN is "Communist" the same way the DPRK is "Democratic".
No, it's different. Vietnam is still a one party communist country and the utilities are publicly run - with all the bureaucracy and incompetence that goes along with it. The state owned enterprises haven't changed that much since Doi Moi.
> This isn't it. The issue is the capacity doesn't exist.
There is clearly capacity for one company to lower demand by more and "sell" it to another which is what the message I replied to was alluding to.
My comment was that while possible, the public utility likely had a blank stare on their face when asked about it.
> The state owned enterprises are run very similarly
Yea, but they are not as singular in control of the economy as they were before Doi Moi.
Just having state owned companies does not make a country communist.
Utilties are state owned (EVN) but the capacity infra is private owned in part or majority.
Also, foreign private sector players like Mitsubishi, Chubu Electric, and POSCO Electric are significant players in the VNese sector by building capacity and significant or majority ownership stakes in power projects, especially because Vietnam has much more stringent FTAs with SK and Japan compared to China.
If Vietnam attempts Chinese style forced JVs, foreign players will return to investing in Thailand, Indonesia, Phillipines, or India.
> There is clearly capacity for one company to lower demand by more and another less which is what the message I was replying to
This by definition is a lack of capacity, because enough capacity was not built, and that was because a lot of us foreigners became much more cautious of financing projects in Vietnam by 2021-23.
> The state owned enterprises haven't changed that much since Doi Moi
I strongly disagree. Significant stakes in the SoEs are now owned by foreign (mostly Japanese, Korean, and HK) companies after the FTAs in the mid-2010s, and at least on the banking and finance side it has professionalized - not to the level in Indonesia or Phillipines, let alone China, but it's getting there.
Your reply seems to be addressing points I’m not making.
> Yea, but they are not as singular in control of the economy as they were before Doi Moi.
That’s not relevant when we are talking about the public utilities, which the government controls.
> Just having state owned companies does not make a country communist.
I never said it does. I said having a one party state run by a communist party gives insights into the government and hence the public utilities.
> Utilties are state owned (EVN) but the capacity infra is private owned in part or majority.
The Vietnam government is happy to take your money but it doesn’t mean you’ll have say over how the SOE is run (hence the blanket request to reduce demand).
Or just the fact you get to bang your head against a wall for a while trying to navigate the state bureaucracy (if unwilling to buy some important people some coffee).
> This by definition is a lack of capacity
Capacity isn’t relevant to sharing of existing capacity. Whatever the capacity is or however much it wasn’t developed, there is still an opportunity for one company to “horse trade” capacity with another company.
I think we're arguing past each other, or at least have are operating with different assumptions.
The utility EVN and its subsidiaries is fairly hands off because of incompetence and corruption.
What ended up happening was most of the regional utilities went broke, and consolidated together, but are still kinda broke, so maintenance is weak and construction of capacity isn't the greatest, yet demand was only growing.
To solve this issue, there were some additional reforms pushed in the mid-2010s along with the FTAs skewed in Japan and South Korea's favor to allow majority ownership of capacity and infra by foreign players (most of whom are Japanese, Korean, and increasingly Chinese).
The utility EVN doesn't have a make or break stake in most of these JVs, and unlike China or even India, cannot push back, because VN just isn't a large enough market to justify those headaches.
The state capacity in VN sucks, but I think you are automatically assuming stuff in Vietnam works the same way as it does in China. It does not, because VN isn't the same size of market that China is, and the largest investors in the Vietnamese market (Japan, South Korea, China) can make Vietnam's life hell if they make it too business unfriendly. This has already started with Korean FDI increasingly moving to PH and TH recently.
I'm just speaking from mine and my SO's experience on this.
Vietnam still has many elements of communist rule, just like China. The economy is largely controlled by state enterprises, often run by incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats.
Private players often get hampered by these horribly run state enterprises. There's also the issue of pervasive corruption that ruins everything it touches.
Just having significant SoEs doesn't make a country "Communist". By those standards so are Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and India.
I've done a lot of work within VN and my SO is herself VNese, so I've had the opportunity to travel and meet with operators there.
Most of the capacity that is built is done so by private players. While there are still a couple oversized SoEs, they cannot compete with the much larger Japanese, South Korean, Singaporean, and Chinese players because Vietnam has FTAs with all those countries.
Phones aren't really toys anymore. It's pretty hard to function in society without either a phone these days. For example, you may find yourself cut off from banking, government services, unable to order at restaurants, etc. There are usually work arounds, but not always.
Given that there is no objective morality in the post-modern world, justice and just are entirely meaningless and arbitrary, and justifying an action is a merely rhetorical exercise.
Factories have big flat roofs. That means low installation cost for solar panels. And these are nowadays pretty efficient. Not perfect angle or random shadow aren’t business or show stoppers now. Especially in a sunny country.
Even if you cover a factory's whole roof with solar panels, it can't generate enough electricity to run during working hours. Manufacturing takes ridiculous amounts of energy.
Depends on what are you manufacturing. 200 watts from square meter roof is doable. 3x3 meter is about right space for a single machine with all the enclosures, tables, etc (in Europe). The average sized machines can be used with single phase allowing 3,6 kW power consumption. Half of it comes from solar panels. Halving power consumption is good imho. This math does not work for steel factory. The math is
much better for assembly line type plant where only power tools <1 kW are used.
There's no reason you can't power solar panel factories with solar panels (once you've bootstrapped the process of course, but that applies to any power source).
Thats one way to achieve "net zero"...