When you travel around Vietnam and Southeast Asia broadly you immediately see just about everyone getting around on motorbike

As the country quickly grows, I wanted to better understand what the impact of all these motorbikes on the environment and society

How will this change in the coming years as Vietnam becomes richer and our planet gets hotter?

Vietnam has experienced rapid population growth and economic development through the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, going from 70 million people to 100 million in just the last 30 years

As the population and economy has grown, so has motorbike ownership

And carbon emissions

Southeast Asia's motorbike ownership has now far surpassed the rest of the world, with over 80% of households in owning a motorbike

Vietnam is second only to Thailand

In the United States, transportation is the second largest source of carbon emissions.

Vietnam is a lower-middle income country going through rapid industrialization. Its total emissions are much less than those of the US, but are growing quickly

In this industrialization phase, which the US is long past, coal-fired energy generation and manufacturing dominate greenhouse gas production

A 2020 study of Ho Chi Minh City attributed 95% of air pollution to transportation sources, with trucks, cars, or motorbikes dominating depending on which species of pollutant you looked at

Motorcycles are responsible for pollutants like methane, carbon monoxide, and black carbon

On the other hand, trucks are responsible for the balance of PM 2.5 particulate matter

This level of air pollution has resulted in an unhealthy environment for everyday Vietnamese people

If we look at the air quality in Hanoi in 2023, 306 days exceeded the WHO recommended Air Quality Index for 2.5 micrometer Particulate Matter

In comparison, New York City generally stayed in the safe range, except during the Canadian wildfires in the summer

We see the consequences of this poor air quality in the death statistics

Air pollution is the fourth highest cause of death in Vietnam

The country is quickly urbanizing - can it improve its urban air quality fast enough to keep up with its population streaming into its cities?

Vietnam implemented an emissions standard equivalent to the EU's Euro 2 standard for motorbikes in 2007, and a Euro 3 equivalent standard was implemented in 2017

However, as of 2024, while the Euro 5 guidelines apply to all new cars sold since 2022, motorbikes are still regulated under Euro 3 standards, with Euro 4 level standards published but not mandatory

Neither the Euro 2 nor Euro 3 standard regulates particulate matter pollution

Adoption of electric vehicles is still nascent

As of 2020 they represented approximately 8% of new two-wheeler sales

How will the adoption of cars impact this trajectory?

Cars are currently owned by only a small minority of Vietnamese households,

However, as people get wealthier they tend to shift to cars and increase their carbon and physical footprint

When I first started to dig into this data, I was not expecting to fall into the weeks long rabbit hole that I did

The analysis presented here is relatively crude, and every piece of new information I learned opened up 4-5 new avenues to explore that I couldn't fit into the scope here

So transportation is not as large a source of carbon emissions for Vietnam as energy generation and manufacturing - what does Vietnam's energy generation portfolio look like? What is its path to a transition to renewables? How can it clean up its industrial sector?

What about deforestation? What about the motorbike accident rate, and how many people are injured as a result of the dense traffic? What about policies to promote public transportation?

There was one thought that I kept coming back to - 3/4ths of the global population lives in a middle income country like Vietnam

They are all grappling with air pollution, and balancing it against economic development