Energy

ASEAN has set an ambitious target of securing 23 percent of its primary energy from renewable sources by 2025 as energy demand in the region is expected to grow by 50 percent. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), this objective entails a “two-and-a-half-fold ...

China is ready to share data on water flows into the Mekong River, a longstanding request of downstream Southeast Asian countries, a Thai foreign ministry official said on Friday. Control of the waters is politically sensitive, and the livelihoods of millions of farmers and fishermen depend ...

China’s extensive damming of the upper Mekong River has reduced water flows, threatening downstream countries Cambodia and Vietnam with environmental harm and food shortages, said experts in advance of a summit meeting of the multilateral  Mekong-Lancang Cooperation group. The summit, to be held on Aug. 24 ...

As US-China tensions turn towards the Mekong River and its dams, the area near Laos’ latest hydropower project on the river is already seeing major controversy around existing dam projects. The Lao government is preparing to start construction on the Luang Prabang Dam, a 1,460-megawatt (MW) project that will be ...

Myanmar has suspended a 380-megawatt hydropower project at the Manipur River in Chin State due to high risks, U Tun Naing, Deputy Minister for Electricity and Energy, told the Hluttaw last week. “After a review at the State Economic Coordination Committee Meeting, this project was found ...

Cambodia’s embrace of new coal power projects is making the Southeast Asian state “less attractive” to international brands producing in the country. In a letter addressed to the Cambodian government and seen by the Nikkei Asian Review, several major companies expressed concern about the country’s plans ...

Southeast Asia’s response to the Covid‑19 outbreak has curtailed electricity use and industrial production, pushing down coal consumption even further this year, according to the latest report from a non-governmental organisation which monitors worldwide fossil fuel infrastructure. Even before Covid-19, new coal plant construction was already slowing in the ...

In his book, River of Time, Jon Swain evoked brilliantly the heady beauty of Indochina and the great Mekong Delta in the very south of Vietnam, where the river finally meets the South China Sea. He also captured the terrifying uncertainty as the Vietnam War came to ...

The latest reports from the Lower Mekong Basin are cause for growing concern that another period of drought will succeed that of 2019, affecting Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Expected rainfall from late May through June and July has not arrived, and the level of ...

Dealing with climate change should be a no-brainer, right? To paraphrase Greta Thunberg, the science is done and only denial, ignorance and inaction remain. Or is that really all? We live in a world of sovereign states. In none of them is it an easy matter ...