Sustainable Energy Future for Asia

Throughout Southeast Asia, coal is still a dominant source of power due to its affordability and availability.  Hydropower is a clean and reliable alternative, but in sensitive locations such as the Mekong Basin, intense hydropower development on has come under fire for threatening the rich biological productivity of the Mekong river and displacing thousands of people.  A promising, climate-safe option is retrofitting existing hydropower reservoirs with floating, utility scale solar PV arrays. This technique is already being applied in a few places in the world, such as India, China and Portugal, but at a scale that is modest compared to the economically-feasible potential.  The Natural Heritage Institute (NHI) has recently shown the Governments of Cambodia and Lao PDR how they can utilize this technology to meet their energy needs instead of building new dams, and thereby preserve the Mekong River fishery. NHI’s goal now is to catalyze and accelerate the adoption of floatovoltaics by conducting a screening analysis to identify the reservoirs and power systems throughout Asia (and hopefully around the world) that are the best prospects and therefore warrant an in-depth feasibility study. The potential to increase renewable, climate-smart power with no further environmental and social impacts is huge.