The industry analysis provides an understanding of the environment in which the Vietnam Schreùder operates. The relevant environment is very broad, encompassing social as well as economic forces and includes the economic and legal factors that affect the pricing of the Vietnam Schreder’s products. The products, markets, competitions, and industry trends are described to provide insight
into lighting industry value drivers and risks. This provides a context in which the importance of the company’s processes can be qualified.
Current Legal and Institutional Framework for Public Lighting Institutional Framework
The existing institutional framework governing the regulation, specification, management, installation, operation and maintenance of public lighting in Vietnam is extremely disaggregated and complex. For major national projects, such as national highways, the national government has the ability to specify associated public lighting. The ministries of Construction, Agriculture and Rural Development and Transportation develop and implement public lighting projects on a national scale. Provincial people’s committees can work through a range of provincial Departments to develop and implement public lighting.
Local institutions such as schools and hospitals and district communes can work on public lighting projects independently. Finally, the national postal system is responsible for lighting associated with its own facilities.
Within urban areas, local authorities invest in public lighting using budget allocations from the provincial government. These allocations are made based on projects proposed by public facility management agencies (e.g., urban lighting companies, urban environment companies or the operators of the schools, hospitals). Following completion of the public lighting investment projects, the operation and maintenance responsibilities pass back to these management agencies and are paid for through local administrative expenditures.
The situation is somewhat different at the rural level. The commune authorities are responsible for financing infrastructure investment projects, as well as their
ongoing operation and maintenance costs. Investment in state-owned schools is the responsibility of the district authority with ongoing operational costs again passing to the commune or local government authorities. In all cases, the approval of lighting investment is subject to director (urban) or chairman (rural) level, local peoples' congress (urban and rural) or ministerial approval depending on the levels of investment requested. This complex organizational structure is further complicated by the lack of any institutionalized planning framework or recognized norms for public lighting.
Another complication is that the and Departments of Construction, Transport and Communications, Planning and Investment, Finance, Science Technology and Environment, and Agriculture and Rural Investment have their own activities that impinge on public lighting. The following diagram illustrates the complex institutional framework.
Figure 3.5 Managerial structure of lighting system in Vietnam
The current lack of national policies related to public lighting, and the very diverse nature of implementation of public lighting investments in Vietnam
has tended to discourage appropriate consideration of operation and maintenance costs during the selection and purchase of public lighting equipment. Unfortunately, the failure to appropriately consider complete life- cycle costs for public lighting is by no means peculiar to Vietnam. However, the projected growth in the Vietnamese lighting sector in the near future makes the local situation particularly compelling. If investments in public lighting continue as they have, Vietnam could be burdened for a generation or more with a lighting infrastructure that will waste electricity, cost more to operate than necessary, and contribute disproportionately to the national inventory of green house gas emissions.
Laws andRegulations
Given the relatively recent realization of the importance of effective management of energy within Vietnam, there are few effective laws or regulations that are relevant to energy consumption in public lighting. There are regulations governing the construction and operation of different types of equipment and facilities, but these regulations are generally obsolete and not enforced. There are now voluntary standards or norms in Vietnam for: (a) Installation and maintenance of public lighting; (b) Road and square lighting; (c) Exterior lighting of buildings; and, (d) Interior lighting of buildings.
Similarly, a procedure exists for the labeling of high quality products that includes consideration of EC&EE. Such standards now exist for: (a) Street light luminaries; (b) Mercury vapor lamps; and, (c) Electromagnetic ballast for use with discharge lighting.
However, starting in the year 2000, the government of Vietnam made all existing product performance standards voluntary as part of a trade
liberalization effort. Because the standards pertaining to lighting were already largely obsolete and not enforced, the effect was small. Without the structured framework proposed by this project it is unlikely either the product standards or the standards for lighting levels/systems will be effectively upgraded, if at all.
Lighting industry in Vietnam is characterized by low efficiency light sources housed within poorly designed luminaries’ and installed in inappropriate locations. For example, 85% of street lighting in Vietnam is provided by obsolete technology (either mercury or incandescent lamps) and installed without benefit of proper planning and engineering analysis. There is an increasing trend to use higher efficiency lamps (High Pressure Sodium, Metal Halide and Compact Fluorescent) in the more affluent urban areas, but this is not being reflected in the majority of the country, particularly among the rural communes. Further, even where the higher efficiency lamp units are installed, their positioning is usually non-optimal. Nor are the associated lamp peripherals and control systems.
The current state of public lighting in Vietnam can be attributed to the following:
• Lack of lighting-related knowledge and skills among policy makers, specifiers, designers, manufacturers and operators/maintainers of lighting for public facilities. This lack includes knowledge about technology options and of the potential benefits of using energy efficient lighting products and designs;
• Lack of comprehensive national and local policies and laws encouraging energy efficiency in public lighting. In addition, even if such laws or policies did exist, current regulatory enforcement mechanisms and
reporting and monitoring systems are inadequate to ensure that they would be carried out.
• Poor availability of low cost, high quality, energy efficient lighting products;
• Lack of local production of low cost, high quality, energy efficient lighting products; and,
• Ineffective administrative structure and a lack of finance to support the installation, operation and maintenance of energy efficient lighting.
This situation is highly likely to remain unchanged unless some forms of intervention to remove these barriers are implemented. If there is no intervention, a significant opportunity to improve the public lighting infrastructure will be missed. If inefficient public lighting continues to be installed throughout the country as economic development continues, it will waste precious resources and make it that much harder for Vietnam to meet its international environmental commitments.
The situation of lighting industry:
The features of Vietnam’s lighting industry can be listed as follows: