Mrs. Nguyen Thi Phuong Hien, Deputy General Director of Transport Development Strategy Institute

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Xin chao, good Afternoon!

On behalf of UNDP, I am honored to welcome you all to this technical consultation workshop on green job assessment for road transport sector, today.

The transportation plays critical roles in creating and sustain the national development trend and take place as driving force for socio-economic development at many different levels, from national to local. An effective transportation system can bring benefits to many different economic sectors in direct or indirect ways, from enhancing market accessibility, create new jobs and higher income, to increasing new investment opportunities in other industrial sectors.

According to statistics from the General Statistics Office, the Viet Nam transportation and logistics sectors contribute about 4.8% of the country's GDP during period 2015-2021, this rate was recorded at 4.65% in 2022 with over 80 thousand enterprise and more than 1.3 million employees. The transport demand is forecast to increase with growth rate at 6.8-7.35% over the period to 2030, which is not only create more employment opportunities but also need stronger efforts to decarbonization of transport sector.

Vietnam has taken many active actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote green growth, political commitments to net zero emissions by 2050 at COP26, updating the NDC report set new targets for GHG emissions by 2030 upto 15.8% as unconditional contributions and 43.5% as the conditional contribution following the mechanism stated in the Paris Agreement and Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). However, energy transition will also create significant changes in economic structure, investment and labor and employment needs and also pose challenges to secure just transition.

As we may know that, in Viet Nam transport sector is a pioneer in developing and implementing sector’s energy transition plan, which has been approved by the   Decision No. 876.QD-TTg. This poses a need for resource mobilization to implement all actions set out under its energy transition plan as well as 10 mitigation interventions stated in the updated NDC to contribute to reality the goal of decarbonization of transportation system, which create impacts on demand and employment structure not only in the transportation and other economies along the value chain.

International experiences show that implementing solutions to promote green transportation will create more job opportunities and also require higher professional skills. Jobs are created directly or indirectly through investment in infrastructure development, manufacturing, transportation services provision, or indirectly through the economy's supply chain.

Against this background, UNDP Vietnam is coordinating with Cambridge Econometrics, the TDSI, to develop a green job assessment model for road transport sector. The FRAME model has been simplified and adjusted to suit Vietnam's economic structure and applied to evaluate the impact on employment changes from implementing the decarbonization solutions in road transport sector. The workshop today is the final workshop with the overall objectives is to share the assessment results of the assignment.

To highlight the importance of green job assessment for transport sustainable development to capture the target of just energy transition, I would like to highlight key points for further discussion and development:

The NDC measures lead to faster modal shift to low carbon transport modal and fuel switch forward electrification of road transport lead to higher employment overall – 99,000 employments increased by year 2030, with highest growth in green jobs will be in the production of electric vehicle. The analysis indicates that the NDC policies in the road transport sector will have positive effects on the Vietnam economy and the green jobs driven from infrastructure development, the production and manufacturing sectors that directly support the low-carbon fuel supply and electric vehicle chains. At the same time, the requirements of shift to higher-skilled occupations are hastened and is a key factor to successfully transition to the green transportation, especially in the areas of machinery and equipment, in addition to technical craftsmen. We hope that the results will provide scientific basis for  new human resources development strategy to satisfy the needs of green energy transition in transport sector.

The analysis indicates decarbonization of transport sector also generates indirect jobs by developing the value chain of other sectors because investing in increasing production will also increase the input demand of supporting sectors such as electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning construction, agriculture, professional services, mining sectors, therefore additional policies such as training and relocation programs to help workers who are affected by these changes will be essential to ensure a just transition.

FRAMES is a whole economy sectoral model, within the scope this study focusing on road transport sector with simplified assumptions for other sectors. The results show that the FRAME model can be adapted and used to forecast green transformation scenarios in the other transportation subsectors and also for other economic sectors to measure green jobs in industries such as energy, agriculture... in the context of implementing low carbon emission solutions, aim for net zero emissions by 2050.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all project partners and individuals who have contributed to the successful release of the study. Colleagues  from the  Cambridge Econometrics, TDSI, MOT to provide their best efforts to complete quite difficult tasks and contribute for just energy transition in Viet Nam.

We look forward to open and informative discussion and engagement as we drive towards a just energy transition in transport sector.

Thank you! Xin cảm ơn!!