Eighty percent of Vietnam’s energy comes from fossil fuels and waste is rife in industrial production, civil construction and transportation, the ministry said.

A volunteer hands out energy conservation information at the HCMC recycling festival in April this year.

Vietnam consumes much more energy for key industries than developed countries, it said.

Vietnam’s coal- and oil-fired electricity plants’ energy efficiency ratio hovers between 28 percent and 32 percent, or 10 percent less than the ratio in developed countries.

The ratio at Vietnamese industrial boilers, currently 60 percent, is 20 percent lower than the world average ratio, according to the ministry.

To produce a ton of steel from iron ore, the country needs 11.3-13 million kilocalories while developed countries just need 4 million.

The ministry said Vietnam’s industrial production industry has to use 1.5-1.7 times more energy to produce the same as Thailand or Malaysia.

While renewable energy sources like solar and wind are in development infancy here, non-renewable energy is drying up, the ministry said.

“Vietnam will become a coal importer in 2020, buying 80-100 million tons to feed its power plants,” Minister Vu Huy Hoang said at the meeting. The country is now a coal exporter, mainly to China.

Hoang and other officials told the meeting the government should create preferential policies to encourage businesses to rely more on alternative energy.

“While the exploitation and use of renewable energy resources in Vietnam has only been trialed, it is essential to have proper policies to encourage businesses to make use of them,” Hoang said.

Phan Minh Tan, director of the HCMC Department of Science and Technology, echoed the point saying trash from Go Cat garbage dump site in Binh Tan District is being used to produce gas to generate power, but the state-run power monopoly Electricity of Vietnam buys it too cheap, at only 4 cents a kilowatt.

He said the low price was no incentive to business to invest in gas-from-garbage projects

“In Germany, the government purchases power generated from waste at 12 cents per kilowatt, then sells at only 10 cents,” he said.

He also said there should be penalties for businesses that ignore using renewable energy.

In China, the government rewards fuel companies to incorporate bio-fuel into at least 2 percent of their total trading volume with tax incentives or penalizes them for not complying, according to Tan.