Green!Tea: Renewable Energy for the Vietnamese tea sector

Description

Vietnam is one of Southeast Asia’s economic powerhouses. It aspires to high-quality agricultural production with a view to lucrative export markets, while transitioning towards more renewable forms of energy production to meet COP26 commitments. Solar power and biomass from productive forests are meant to support this transition. Yet, the limited availability of land creates tensions between agricultural production and renewable energy production. In addition, soil health degradation and droughts driven by climate change lead to high inputs of fertilizers and reliance on energy for irrigation.

The combination of agrivoltaics (i.e., photovoltaic installations above cropland) and pyrolysis of biomass to produce heat and biochar is a promising approach to reduce production costs, while boosting energy and resource efficiency of farming communities and enabling them to produce high-quality agricultural goods. The wide-spread adoption of such a technological setting has the potential to reinforce Vietnam’s position on international markets, while making a substantial contribution to its energy transition.

The project aims to design a pilot integrated agrivoltaic-pyrolysis system including characteristics (business model, partnerships, costs and revenues for farmers, legal aspects, etc.) to be implemented in the tea-producing province of Nghe An or other other tea-growing provinces.