Laos is a country that is situated right in the middle of China, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, with the Mekong River flowing right through it. The Mekong River is a very long river, spanning almost 2,700 miles, which is equivalent to the distance between Boston and Arizona. It would take approximately 40 days of continuous driving at a good pace in order to cover that distance.
Because of the river flow, the country is able to harness the kinetic energy of the flowing river and transform it into electricity. This enables the country to generate a lot of energy and then sell the excess to its neighbours. Laos has already been doing it for many years. The current cross-border agreements has Laos supplying up to 7,000 MW of energy to Thailand. Aside from Thailand, It is also supplying 5,000 MW of energy to Vietnam and 200 MW to Cambodia.
The current studies estimated that the hydropower potential of Laos, is roughly about 26 GW, which is equivalent to the power generated by almost 81 million solar panels. The largest solar farm in the world generates only about 2,000 MW. In this case, Laos’ hydropower potential means that the country could generate energy that is 12 times more than the energy that is generated by the largest solar farm.
This is why Laos is being called the “Battery of Southeast Asia”.
Charging full steam into building more dams in order to meet energy demands seems to be a natural and easy choice, but research has shown that dam building actually disrupts the communities living along the river. It forces those people to relocate and also threatens to harm the local fishing stocks.
This is some food for thought. Sometimes we have to pay attention to the instruments that we use to harness renewable energy. It could be be harmful to our environment. Even though renewable energy is supposedly the better and cleaner energy as compared to fossil fuel, sometimes, maybe we should take a step back and do a holistic cost-benefit-analysis before plunging ahead.
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