Mercury rising: Why a Thai community believes it is being poisoned across the international border

NAN, Thailand: On clear mornings, at dawn, Ms Kanchanaporn Paeng-ud stands on a hillcrest where her family processes tapioca and looks out beyond the sweeping valleys across to neighbouring country Laos. On the horizon, some 20 km away, she can see what resembles billowing columns of ...

Jack Board

Vietnam struggles to break one of world's biggest coal addictions

Despite Vietnam’s solar boom and ambitious climate targets, the fast-growing economy is struggling to quit dirty energy – leaving one of the world’s biggest coal power programmes largely intact. During the COP26 climate summit last year, the government boldly promised to end the construction of new ...

AFP/fh

Asia swaps coal for wood fuel, but emissions still a threat

The rebuke of coal has pushed countries like South Korea and Japan to embrace the harvesting of trees to be processed into wood pellets, but environmentalists are warning that this fuel might prove as damaging as the black mineral it is replacing. Some critics focus on ...

LIEN HOANG

Unraveling the Mystery of Laos U-Turn from Renewables to Coal to Power the Battery of Southeast Asia

After years of hydropower supercharging Laos’ successful ambition to become the key power exporter in the region, Laos’ energy export market has taken a surprising turn towards coal. According to most international analysis from Carbon Tracker to Bloomberg, carbon is dying. Yet in Laos, energy carbon production went ...

Kannikar Petchkaew

Cambodia's Coal-Fueled Power Plants and their Environmental Costs

Cambodia’s move to approve new coal-fired power plants has prompted concern about potential environmental and health costs despite the government pledging to strictly enforce environmental regulations.  The Cambodian government Friday greenlighted the construction of two more coal power plants in Koh Kong and Odor Meanchey provinces, ...

Sao Phal Niseiy

Finance firms plan to close coal plants in Asia

Some of the world’s biggest financial institutions are working on a plan to speed the closure of coal-fired power plants in Asia, the BBC has been told. The initiative was developed by UK insurer Prudential, is being driven by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and includes ...

Ethnic communities in Myanmar opposing a coal plant see their fight get harder

Almost two decades ago, Myanmar’s largest coal-fired power plant was built as a joint venture by a group of military-affiliated businessmen and the China National Heavy Machinery Corporation. Since then, it has disrupted the socioeconomic lives of the Pa’O and Taungyo people who are Indigenous ...

Robert Bociaga

Hundreds of Families Forced to Move for Lao Coal Plant Expansion

Authorities in northwestern Laos are forcing hundreds of families to relocate to make way for the expansion of a lignite power plant, setting the stage for a dispute over compensation with residents who say they will be shortchanged by the communist government’s ambitious development plans. A ...

RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Coal-powered developments threaten Cambodia’s largest national park

Cambodia’s government has granted permission for a new special economic zone (SEZ) and coal-fired power plant within the lush Botum Sakor National Park in coastal Koh Kong province. The SEZ would create another loosely regulated industrial area within a biodiverse primary forest. Late last year, Koh ...

Danielle Keeton-Olsen

CDC approves Royal Group’s 700MW coal-fired power plant

The Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) on December 8 approved Botum Sakor Energy Co Ltd’s (BSE’s) more-than-$1 billion 700MW coal-fired power station in Koh Kong province’s southwestern Botum Sakor district. Based in Thma Sar commune’s Chamlang Ko village, the CDC noted that the facility ...

Thou Vireak

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