Energy
Electricity production
Thailand Touted for Rare Move to Drop Chinese Plan for Mekong River
Rights groups and researchers have welcomed Thailand’s decision to cancel a Beijing-backed project to dredge and blow open a shallow and rocky stretch of the Mekong River along the Thai-Lao border. The move is a rare victory for groups and communities fighting to save Southeast Asia’s ...
Zsombor Peter
Amid hydropower boom, Laos streams ahead on latest Mekong dam
On a wide bank of the Mekong River, yellow markers and visits by surveyors show preparations underway to build Laos’ third and largest dam on Southeast Asia’s most vital waterway. About an hour downstream, in the laid-back tourist centre of Luang Prabang, the dam’s developers heard ...
Kay Johnson, Panu Wongcha-um
NASA Satellite Images Show Mekong River Change From Brown To Green
NASA and the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Landsat 8 satellite captured images of the Mekong river before and after it turned from its signature brown to an unusual aquamarine color. According to authorities, it is possible for the green color to persist until the ...
Athena Chan
Losing dolphins for more hydropower
The construction of the Don Sahong hydropower dam in Laos has affected the habitats of Mekong River dolphins, causing their numbers to dwindle in Stung Treng province. The dwindling numbers are causing a decline in tourists who wish to see them, resulting in loss of ...
Pech Sotheary
‘No fish’: How dams and climate change are choking Asia’s great lake
For more than half a century, January meant prime fishing season for Pang Bin. He took his wooden boat out into Cambodia’s largest lake, his catches and their sales sustaining his family for much of the year. This month, the 75-year-old decided to call it quits, ...
Shashank Bangali
The Luang Prabang Hydro-Dam on an Earthquake in Northern Laos and the Risk of a Series of Dam Breakdowns
Expert geologists have often pointed to the danger of earthquakes happening in the region where the main stream Xayaburi Dam was located. This region in Northern Laos is known to be geologically unstable. Professor Punya Charusiri PhD of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok has observed: “The Xayaburi dam ...
Laos to export 20,000 MW of electricity by 2030
Laos’ electricity exports to neighbouring countries and Asean states are expected to increase to about 20,000 MW between 2020 and 2030. Electricity is considered a huge revenue earner for Laos, especially through exports to neighbouring countries and Asean states such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar ...
Vientiane Times
China's Mekong River dams are generating renewable energy, but are costing locals their livelihoods
Early in January, locals in the northern Thai village of Chiang Khong woke to find the Mekong River had dropped a metre overnight. The water level fell so rapidly that damp mud was still visible days later when the ABC visited the area and some boats ...
Amy Bainbridge and Supattra Vimonsuk
$4M solar farm investment launched in Cambodia
Pestech International, a Malaysian company that specialises in solar power technology and infrastructure, has expanded its presence in the Kingdom. The Edge Markets reported yesterday that Pestech has acquired a 94 percent stake in Green Sustainable Ventures (Cambodia). The investment is worth $4 million, according to ...
Jose Rodriguez T. Senase
Thailand to Air Concerns with River Commission over Drought, Chinese Dams in Mekong
Thailand will raise concerns about its current drought during a Mekong River Commission meeting expected next month, the Thai water-resources chief said, as local farmers complained that dams in China were choking the waterway on which millions depend for their livelihoods. Somkiat Prajamwong, director of Thailand’s ...