Energy importers must consider true ‘sustainability’ of Laos hydropower

On 23 June 2022, the import of 100 megawatts (MW) of hydropower from Laos to Singapore by Thailand and Malaysia was hailed as a historic milestone. A part of a pilot challenge generally known as the Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Energy Integration Venture (LTMS-PIP), this occasion represented Singapore’s first ever import of renewable vitality, and in addition the primary occasion of cross-border electrical energy commerce involving 4 nations from the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Nevertheless, this improvement takes place amid rising considerations for the ecological way forward for the transboundary Mekong River and the hundreds of thousands of people that rely upon it. A 2018 examine by the Mekong River Fee concluded that additional hydropower improvement on the river would negatively have an effect on ecosystems, and would cut back soil fertility, rice manufacturing, fish yields and meals safety, whereas rising poverty within the river basin.

The draw of hydropower and a regional energy grid

For landlocked Laos, the current export of vitality to Singapore brings it one step nearer to fulfilling its ambition to turn out to be the “battery of Southeast Asia” by harnessing the 23,000 MW of exploitable hydropower potential from the Mekong and its tributaries. At the moment, Laos has greater than 70 operational dams with a complete producing capability of 8,880 MW, of which two are on the Mekong’s mainstream. Seven extra are in numerous levels of planning on the mainstream. Based on Stimson’s Mekong Infrastructure Tracker, round 30 dams are underneath development throughout Laos, and over 200 are deliberate.

Hydropower is a profitable pillar of the Laotian authorities’s objective to elevate the nation out of its standing as one of many world’s least developed nations. A 2010 evaluation by the Worldwide Centre for Environmental Administration discovered that if all proposed dams on the principle Mekong River have been to go forward, Laos would earn as much as USD 2.6 billion per 12 months in export income.

In principle, establishing regional energy grids connecting Mekong and ASEAN nations would allow energy buying and selling between nations reminiscent of Laos, which produces surplus vitality, and energy-hungry nations reminiscent of Thailand and Vietnam. By 2021, out of Laos’ 10,400 MW whole put in vitality capability, of which 80% is generated by hydropower dams, 5,421 MW was exported to Thailand and 572 MW was offered to Vietnam. Proponents describe regional grids as a strategy to promote financial progress, vitality safety and the event of renewable vitality in Southeast Asia.

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But, this is perhaps happening on the expense of the setting, pure resource-based livelihoods and meals safety. A 2018 examine by Mae Fah Luang College in Thailand and the Australian Nationwide College estimated that the full exterior prices of the 11 deliberate mainstream dams on the decrease Mekong would whole USD 18 billion, and that the initiatives weren’t economically viable when weighed in opposition to the lack of seize fisheries, sediment, and social mitigation prices.

Giant-scale dams as drivers of environmental injustice

The manufacturing of renewable vitality, be it wind, photo voltaic or hydropower, requires the development of infrastructure that incurs completely different levels of affect on the setting.

Giant hydropower dams are controversial when it comes to their damaging results on river methods, much more so in watersheds that span a number of nations and within the context of local weather change. For greater than a decade, communities who dwell on riverbanks in northern Thailand have reported fluctuating water ranges they declare are attributable to upstream dam operations on China’s part of the Mekong, which they are saying have influenced their dry-season livelihoods negatively. 

Dams additionally block the provision of sediments that kind fertile floodplains. A couple of weeks after the Xayaburi Dam in northern Laos grew to become operational in October 2019, the usually-muddy Mekong turned clear blue, indicating that the river had turn out to be starved of nutrient-rich sediment.

Main dams alongside the Mekong River, together with these that are underneath development or within the planning levels (Graphic: The Third Pole)

As well as, Mekong hydropower dams block fish migration routes, threatening meals safety in one of many world’s largest inland fisheries. Fisheries account for as much as 30% of Cambodia and Laos’ nationwide protein provide, and fishers are overrepresented in poor and susceptible communities within the decrease Mekong basin. 

These points contribute to concern that the development of enormous dams within the Mekong area is a major driver of environmental injustice. Regardless of claims by the Laotian authorities that hydropower dams are constructed consistent with safeguards to mitigate their affect, a variety of educational research have demonstrated in any other case. The circumstances of the Nam Theun 2 challenge, which was supported by the World Financial institution and touted as a ‘mannequin’ for dam-building in Laos, the Theun-Hinboun dam, and the collapse of the Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy dam in 2018 have demonstrated that the Laos authorities’s weak capability in regulating hydropower dam development has contributed to the creation of vulnerability amongst affected communities.

Dam development alongside the Mekong and its tributaries takes place amid weak social and environmental safeguards; poor-quality environmental affect assessments that fail to totally account for the transnational and cumulative results of hydropower improvement; and an absence of significant public participation in decision-making. In the meantime, few avenues can be found for affected communities to hunt compensation for losses in livelihoods.

Sustainability past borders

By supporting the hydropower business in Laos, Singapore’s vitality import will inflict environmental hurt and injustice on the Mekong’s ecosystems and the hundreds of thousands of people that rely upon the river for his or her livelihoods and meals safety. However additionally it is in Singapore’s nationwide pursuits to think about transboundary environmental sustainability.

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Firstly, the long-term sustainability of hydropower dams on the Mekong is uncertain, given the uncertainties of local weather change which will trigger extended droughts and water shortages, as seen from 2019 to 2021, when water ranges fell unprecedentedly low. The cumulative results of local weather change together with dam-building by a variety of uncoordinated personal operators might lead to operators being unable to fulfil their power-generation targets.

Secondly, Singapore’s meals safety is perhaps impacted. In 2020, virtually 65% of its rice was imported from the decrease Mekong area, with the bulk coming from Thailand Vietnam offering about 20%. Given the risk that hydropower improvement poses to sediment stream and subsequently agricultural productiveness, Singapore – and different nations – ought to take into account the trade-offs between vitality, water and meals within the area fastidiously.

Lastly, hydropower improvement is intently tied to geopolitical dynamics in Southeast Asia, significantly China’s financial and political affect. China is the second-largest investor in Laos’ power-generation sector after Thailand. Issues over Laos’ excessive degree of indebtedness to China have been heightened in 2021, when the Laotian authorities granted a 25-year concession to a Chinese language firm to construct, handle and management its energy grid. The nation’s excessive ranges of dependency on Chinese language funding in its hydropower and power-generation sector might have knock-on results on ASEAN unity in the case of managing the affiliation’s sophisticated relationship with China in different areas.

On the floor, Singapore’s choice to import renewable vitality seems to be a helpful strategy to meet its local weather objectives. Its Nationwide Local weather Change Secretariat notes that greater than 95% of Singapore’s vitality is fuelled by pure fuel. The island nation’s choices to decarbonise its vitality sector by decreasing its fossil gasoline dependency is proscribed by its small land dimension and lack of pure assets. Equally, renewable vitality performs a rising position in Thailand’s Energy Improvement Plan, and in 2021 Thailand agreed to purchase electrical energy from an extra three deliberate Mekong mainstream dams in Laos. Nevertheless, it’s value noting that the sturdy environmental actions in opposition to dams in Thailand have contributed to those selections to import hydropower as a substitute. It would serve these nations effectively to rethink whether or not imported Laotian hydropower can really be thought-about ‘sustainable’.