Biomass Business Opportunities in Vietnam

The goal of this survey is to provide a more specific and integral perspective in which niches, relevant policy development by the Vietnamese government, legislation and sustainability criteria are clearly addressed to benefit both the Dutch Private sector as well as to stimulate Dutch-Vietnamese cooperation and support the Vietnamese government in its search for tangible options to develop the desired enabling environment for a sustainable biomass/biofuel market.

Through various regulations and programmes NL Agency facilitates and stimulates projects and supplementary research in order to gain experience in the production and certification of sustainable biomass.

The Netherlands Programmes Sustainable Biomass (NPSB) cluster the knowledge from the biomass project portfolio of NL Agency and fill the knowledge gaps with supplementary research. The project portfolio for NPSB consists of the programmes Global Sustainable Biomass and Sustainable Biomass Import and the relevant projects of the Daey Ouwens Fund. Also, the experience of other programmes and players is used. The mission of the NPSB is to make biomass production sustainable, in order to facilitate the transition to a bio-based economy.

In July NL Agency visited the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam to further discuss the potentials and opportunities for and barriers to biomass projects in Vietnam. Based on the findings of this mission, combined with the conclusions of the Cleantech mission of June 2011, Agency NL concluded that the Dutch private parties need a more specific and integral perspective in which also niches, relevant policy development by the Vietnamese government, legislation and sustainability criteria are clearly addressed. These insights would also benefit the Vietnamese government, which is also searching for tangible options to develop the desired enabling environment for a sustainable biomass/biofuel market. Therefore NL Agency published a “Terms of Reference business opportunities Biomass Viet Nam” in which the integral perspective is dealt with.

SNV was selected and executed the assignment in the period October 2011 – February 2012. With this report SNV Netherlands Development Organisation Vietnam would like to present its results.