Green Banking Programme helps develop the first project finance scheme for a large-scale PV system in Vietnam

After 3 years and 40 seminars with more than 750 participants, the Green Banking Capacity Building Programme in South East Asia has come to an end. The Renewables Academy (RENAC) AG started the IKI-funded global programme in 2015 with the goals of globally increasing the availability and use of financing instruments for Renewable Energy (RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) projects, increasing the willingness of financial institutions to get involved in RE and EE finance, and facilitating accessibility to global climate finance options.

The results of a survey conducted at the end of the project showed that the training helped to enhance knowledge and provide insights into the sector. Of the 90 respondents, one third is now looking to find employment in the Green Energy/Climate Finance sector, 10 said they have been working in this field since the training, and more than half have already worked in the field and have been able to apply their newly acquired knowledge to their professional context (e.g. explain better, gain new clients, raise awareness among colleagues and clients).

One of the participants who was able to apply his newly acquired expertise into his profession is Hiep Huynh, who is working at a financial institution in Vietnam. Even before participating in the training, he recognised that Green Energy is an important part of sustainable development and therefore needs to be promoted through appropriate financing. For this reason, he developed an interest in climate finance and began to educate himself on the topic. In 2017, Hiep applied for a scholarship at RENAC for the Green Energy Finance Specialist (GEFS) Programme and was selected to participate in the six-month training, consisting of five months online training and a three-day face-to-face seminar in Hanoi. The training, in which he achieved with very good results, helped him to structure his ideas and questions concerning green finance.

And his ideas have become reality. Since 2017, he has been overseeing the financing of photovoltaic projects for his company. It was the perfect time because in 2017 the Government issued a decision to provide incentives for solar energy development such as tax breaks, import duty exemption, and land lease exemption. This support lead to a large number of applications from project developers seeking debt finance and funding. Hiep´s company had three simple-yet-effective criteria to evaluate the incoming project proposals: (i) land, (ii) grid, and (iii) government. Of the more than 50 solar projects Hiep and his team reviewed, they selected the Mui Ne Solar Project for funding and debt arrangement.

The Mui Ne Solar Plant, which covers an area of over 38 hectares of waste land in Binh Thuan Province, has a capacity of 40 MWp. The project began construction in October,2018 and hosted a completion ceremony on 12 June, 2019. Once fully operational, it will produce over 65 million kWh per year, enough to power the nearby city – a great success for Renewable Energy and Climate Finance in Southeast Asia!

Hiep Huynh presented his success story at the Green Banking Alumni Conference in Hanoi – one of five conferences that were held in the partner countries in March and April 2019. The one-day conferences offered the opportunity to bring together the network built up within the project, to review what has been achieved in the past years, and to forge plans for the further development of the links between finance/banking and green energy.

Because of its success, the programme is to be continued in eight Latin American countries.