Energy
ADB sells $1.3 billion in global green bonds to spur climate financing
The Asian Development Bank has raised $1.3 billion to help finance climate change mitigation and adaptation projects with the issue of dual-tranche 3-year and 10-year green bonds, following its inaugural green bond issue in 2015. Last year, ADB announced that it will double its annual climate ...
Offices of Mekong River Commission decamp to Laos
The Mekong River Commission’s secretariat in Phnom Penh – one of two for the group, charged with managing the river’s sustainable development – is being shuttered in favour of a single office in Vientiane, a decision that has provoked widespread concern among current and former ...
China-Laos relations improve as Gezhouba Group constructs hydro power plant
The project is called Xelanong 2 and is foreseen to generate 35 megawatts of power, or 140,700 megawatts of electricity annually. The Chinese company is the one which built the giant Gezhouba Dam in the Yangtze River which produces 2,715 megawatts of power. Lin Boqiang, director of the ...
China's 5 year plan for energy
China’s 13th Five-Year Plan for energy might be one of the most anticipated official documents in the world and is one that will have far-reaching impacts on the carbon trajectory of the world’s number one emitter. Recently, information about the plan begins to surface in the Chinese ...
MEA to bury 127km of power lines by 2020
The Metropolitan Electricity Authority says it will continue putting power lines underground, expecting to bury another 127 kilometres by 2020. The agency plans several other power line projects in addition to those already initiated, said MEA governor Somchai Roadrungwasinkul. The first phase of the plan, ...
US clean coal technology power plant's failures bode ill for NCPO
The largest environmental story to break this month has been The New York Times‘ exposé of the Mississippi-based Kemper Project’s mismanagement, delays, inflated costs, and alleged fraud, making a mockery of the NCPO’s plans to convert Thailand from natural gas to ‘clean coal’. The Thailand Power ...
Rough waters of Lower Sesan II dam
According to the Vietnam River Network, Lower Sesan II dam in Cambodia will impact both environmental and social aspects. Impacts will be felt not only around the project site but also from the upstream Sesan River to downstream at the Sekong River, Tonle Sap, Vietnam ...
Farmers choose solar farm over endangered bird
When given a choice between renewable energy and wildlife conservation, people in Samut Sakhon have opted for a solar farm for financial reasons. Tractors and trucks loaded with soil were seen busily working in a field yesterday to fill a salt pan in Ban Khok ...
River of change: hydropower dams and the Mekong River’s uncertain future
From the snowy plateaus of Tibet to the mountain gorges of China’s Yunnan province and beyond to the jungled borders of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and down to the plains of Cambodia and paddy fields of Vietnam – the Mekong River is of crucial importance to ...
Laos builds third hydropower dam, threatening Mekong River in VN
Vietnam needs to find solutions to the increasing number of hydropower dams being built in regional countries, according to Dr Vu Trong Hong, chair of the Vietnam Water Resources Association, and former Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. Laos is preparing to build the ...