Coal supplies half of Vietnam's power despite 2050 exit plan

Vietnam is relying even more on coal despite its target of ending coal-fired power by 2050. According to The Investor coal-fired plants supplied 50.6% of the electricity the country generated and imported from January to August 2026, a rise of 1.3 percentage points compared with the same period a year earlier.

Vietnam's reliance on coal has grown as electricity demand rises and projects using other fuels move slowly. At the same time, conflict in the Middle East has exposed the price risk of imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), which planners expected to take a large share of the generation mix.

Coal plants generated 119.24bn kWh between January and August. State utility Vietnam Electricity (EVN) put total generation and imports at about 322.81bn kWh in 2025. Coal supplied 144.78bn kWh of that, or 44.85%. Hydropower contributed 33.25% and renewables around 12.5%.

At the close of 2025, coal plants in operation totaled about 28,100 MW, or 32.1% of Vietnam's installed capacity. Approved in April 2025, the revised Power Development Plan VIII foresees coal capacity reaching about 31,055 MW by 2030. It allows coal projects to proceed only if they were included in the previous plan and are already being built, while plants over 40 years old that cannot convert to biomass or ammonia will have to shut down.

On July 7, the Ministry of Industry and Trade proposed revising the plan again. The revision would add viable baseload sources and consider keeping coal generation at an appropriate scale, together with a roadmap for treating emissions.

Spot LNG prices in Northeast Asia stood at around $10 per million British thermal units before US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28. They climbed to $25.3 by the end of March and to $26-30 in September. Newcastle thermal coal rose from $115.96 per tonne to a mid-June peak of $150.25.

According to Lam Pham, an energy expert at Ember, Vietnam may hold on to part of its current coal fleet for now to safeguard reliability, though every plant ought to be given a clear timetable for retirement. AES Vietnam president Olivier Marquette said that during the transition coal would still underpin the grid's reliability, serving as one component of a broader mix that also includes gas, renewables and storage.

Between 2030 and 2035, the government intends to bring into operation Ninh Thuan 1 and its sister project Ninh Thuan 2, two nuclear power plants whose total capacity would be 4,000-6,400 MW.