A workshop was held in the Mekong delta province of An Giang on May 27 for the provincial authorities and Swedish diplomats and experts to discuss environment and energy cooperation.

The “An Giang-Sweden Partner Cooperation on Environment, Renewable Energy and Climate Change” workshop was jointly organised by the Embassy of Sweden in Hanoi and the People’s Committee of An Giang and the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.

At the workshop, Swedish experts in the areas of renewable energy and waste water treatment presented their green solutions and technologies.

The event was held as An Giang province, a strong area for rice production and seafood processing, is meeting with emerging environmental issues, including treatment of wastewater from fishery processing factories and of rice husks.

With an annual rice output of between 3.4 and 3.5 million tonnes which produce an estimated 640,000 tonnes of rice husk, An Giang is urgently in need of new technologies to turn rice husk and other agricultural wastes into energy to feed around 1,695 brick kilns that are currently run on biomass fuel.

The province has a total acreage for tra and basa fish farming of 1,200-1,400 hectares and 17 fish processing factories, each discharges from 2,000 to 6,000 cu.m of wastewater everyday.

Participants to the workshop focused their discussions on the use of biogas technology for turning agricultural wastes into energy; aquaculture, treatment of industrial waste, cutting the use of fossil fuels, solutions and resources to help An Giang and other Mekong delta provinces response to climate change.

An Giang authorities voiced their interests in expanding cooperation with local and foreign organisations on application of advanced solutions and technologies as well as human resources training./.