A group of rich countries and international organizations pledged on Wednesday to mobilize $15.5 billion to help Vietnam reduce its dependence on fossil fuels to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, AFP reported.

The European Commission announced that the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States, Italy, Canada, Japan, Norway and Denmark are members of this “Just Energy Transition Partnership” (JETP) with Vietnam.

This was announced during the summit in Brussels between the leaders of the EU, from which Great Britain left, and the leaders of the ASEAN countries, of which Vietnam is a member.

A similar partnership was agreed with Indonesia at the G20 summit in November, and another $98 billion partnership was signed with South Africa at COP26.

Vietnam must move the planned peak date for all greenhouse gas emissions from 2035 to 2030 and accelerate the adoption of renewable energy sources to account for at least 47% of electricity generation by 2030, up from 36% now.

Private and public funding will be mobilized over a period of “3 to 5 years” to support this environmental transition, and meeting the targets “will save approximately 500 megatons (0.5 billion tons) of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035,” the press release states.

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