Measuring Viet Nam’s transport emissions

IKI project supports the revision of Viet Nam’s NDC for the transport sector.

In October, a Vietnamese delegation participated in an inventory training course in Germany. The goal of the five-day-workshop was to learn from Germany’s experience in modelling transport emissions. 

Over the course of the last decade, Viet Nam has seen a dramatic rise in transport emissions due to increasing rates of motorisation, especially motorbikes. As many as 47 million two-wheelers are currently in use on Vietnamese roads – roughly one bike for every two people. In 2011, transport already accounted for approximately 20% of the country’s total energy-based emissions. Due to the role that transport plays in Viet Nam’s emissions profile, this sector is highlighted as a focus area in Viet Nam’s (Intended) Nationally Determined Contribution ((I)NDC). However, an in-depth analysis of mitigation potentials in the transport sector was not possible due to time constraints ahead of the submission of Viet Nam’s INDC.

Since the beginning of this year, the project “Advancing Climate Strategies in Rapidly Motorising Countries” supports Viet Nam’s Ministry of Transport (MoT) by strengthening its capacities to calculate the sector’s contribution to Viet Nam’s NDC. It is financed by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Environment Ministry (BMUB) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

In August, Viet Nam’s Vice Minister of Transport Truong Quang Nghia set up a Working Group on the establishment of a national emissions inventory for the national transport sector. The Working Group is headed by the Director General of the Department for Environment under the MoT and comprises 13 members who represent road, rail, air, and maritime transport, as well as inland navigation.

In October, GIZ invited a delegation to a training course in Germany, delivered in cooperation with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU), which operates the TREMOD model that is used to calculate the German transport emissions inventory. During the course, an assessment of the data availability for each transport sub-sector was conducted and suitable calculation approaches were identified. Based on the skills acquired on the course, project partners are now able to develop additional data collection emission models for relevant sub-sectors. Consequently, existing inventory models will become more sophisticated and can be adapted to the Vietnamese context. Based on the current initial activity-based inventory and additional historical data, GIZ will provide further support to MoT in developing emission scenarios in order to analyse the impact of sectoral mitigation policies. In turn, these can be used to assess the sector’s contribution to Viet Nam’s NDC and to review Viet Nam’s National Transport Climate Change Action Plan accordingly.

The training course constitutes an important step towards the development of a GHG emission model for the Vietnamese context.