Rethinking southeast Asia’s energy plans
Big hydropower plants are an important source of clean and cheap electricity for many countries in Southeast Asia. However, dams harm the environment and have dire consequences on local communities. Building more dams would therefore pose major trade-offs between electricity supply and environmental protection.
A team of scientists based in Singapore showed that these two challenges can be decoupled. Their study, titled “Solar energy and regional coordination as a feasible alternative to large hydropower in Southeast Asia”, recently published in Nature Communications, showed that there are more sustainable pathways to a clean energy future (refer to image).
SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN
