Ottawa (VNA) - BNN Bloomberg, Canada's businessnews network reporting on finance and markets, has recently published anarticle highlighting the extraordinary 100-fold increase in solar power thathas taken place in Vietnam over the last two years.

The Southeast Asian nation now ranks seventh in theworld in terms of capacity, according to clean energy research groupBloombergNEF, and in 2020 the only countries that installed more solar panelswere the US and China, the article said.

 “I have neverseen a country explode like this in solar,” Logan Knox, Chief Executive ofVietnam operations of UPC Renewables, which builds and operates wind and solarfarms across Asia, was cited by BNN Bloomberg. “It’s almost unbelievable.”

Vietnam is an encouraging sign that global efforts todiscourage the use of fossil fuels and boost the accessibility of cleanalternatives are bearing fruit, the article said.

The government turned to the solar industry a fewyears ago as a growing number of power shortages threatened to sap its economicmomentum. Years of rapid growth meant surging electricity demand from factoriesbuilt by multinational giants including Samsung Electronics Co. and suppliersfor Apple Inc.

A plan to meet that with an ambitious fleet of coalpower plants has fallen behind schedule, due in large part to push-back fromlocal leaders concerned about air quality and financing difficulties as globalbanks stopped lending for the dirtiest energy source.

That same shift to clean energy needs to happen inmore developing countries if emissions worldwide are to be zeroed out bymid-century—a timeline needed to avoid catastrophic global warming, the articlenoted./