Energy

Myanmar and Thailand have announced plans for major gas power projects, as well as greater moves to adopt renewable energy sources. The news will cheer conservationists battling to prevent large dams being built on major rivers in the north of Myanmar. ...

Floodwater released by a recently opened Chinese hydroelectric dam in Cambodia has completely submerged a village, the campaign group International Rivers said on Friday (Feb 2). Hundreds of families from five villages in the northern province of Stung Treng had moved several months ago to designated ...

A Cambodian representative to the Mekong River Commission (MRC) said yesterday that new guidelines for hydropower development agreed to late last month don’t fully address threats to the health of the imperiled waterway. Keep reading ...

Hydropower developers and representatives of the Mekong River Commission member countries met last week for the last time before finalising guidelines to mitigate the negative impacts of dam construction on the Mekong River, though conservationists expressed doubts about whether such guidelines would make a difference. Keep ...

Laos and Myanmar are mulling an electricity agreement to empower Laos’ development needs, local daily Vientiane Times quoted a senior Lao official as saying on Tuesday. Keep reading ...

Multiple dams and hydropower projects being built in China on the Lancang Jiang River, which becomes the Mekong River when it leaves China, are having a significant effect on the livelihoods and living conditions of millions of people along the Mekong River in downstream countries. ...

Guidelines for mitigating the environmental impact and managing risks of hydropower dams in the Mekong River will be established at the end of March 2018 after discussion between Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Forty-five officials from the four countries have been meeting in Vientiane this ...

China’s hyperactive dam building is a reminder that, while the international attention remains on its recidivist activities in the South China Sea’s disputed waters, it is also focusing quietly on other waters – of rivers that originate in Chinese-controlled territory like Tibet and flow to ...

As part of an ambitious bid to boost its hydropower output and become the ‘battery’ of Southeast Asia, the landlocked communist state of Laos now has three dam projects underway along the vast stretches of the Mekong river that wind through its rugged mountainous landscape.Keep ...

Water management in the Mekong region is, in practice, dominated by energy objectives. In Cambodia, the priority is to substitute domestically produced hydropower for expensive diesel and electricity imports. In Laos, the priority is to generate revenue by drawing in foreign investment in dams and export ...