An Giang, the International Development Agency of Sweden and the Swedish Energy Centre co-hosted a workshop themed “Energy and Sustainable Growth in An Giang – Potential Investment Projects and International Cooperation” in Ho Chi Minh City on October 3.

Vuong Binh Thanh, Chairman of the An Giang People’s Committee, committed to providing support to investors along with drastically reforming administrative formalities for them.

In 2009, Sweden and Vietnam inked a 70 million USD development cooperation agreement for the 2009-2011 period, which also covered environment, renewable energy and climate change issues.

Over the recent past, Sweden has worked with An Giang in three projects on sustainable community development, improving the capacity of biomass power generation and establishing a centre of excellence in renewable energy and power efficiency.

The Mekong Delta province is seeking for Sweden’s continued assistance to develop projects that use renewable resources, like rice husks, which are available in large quantity in the post-harvest time, to generate power and biogas based on clean development mechanism (CDM).

Nguyen Duc Cuong, an official from the Vietnam Institute of Energy, noted that a plenty of sugarcane bagasse, rice husks and wood waste can produce about 118 million tonnes of biomass and 4.8 billion cubic metres of biogas annually for the country.

Vietnam now ranks second in the world in export of rice husks with 8 million tonnes a year. Rice husks-generated energy contributes significantly to the power sector’s sustainable development.