Rethinking Hydropower in Myanmar

Sep 1, 2017 | Michael Spolum
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Electricity demand has surged past available supplies by a factor of 15 percent annually and is expected to more than double by 2020. Rolling brownouts are common and investor optimism, both foreign and domestic, is fading.   Although often eclipsed by interest in the hydrocarbon and mining sectors, Myanmar’s hydrological resources are its most important natural resource. Hydropower generates two thirds of Myanmar’s modest 4.9 gigawatts of installed capacity, a small slice of the country’s 95GW of untapped hydropower potential. Not surprisingly, the Ministry of Electricity and Energy has turned to the nation’s free flowing rivers to address this widening electricity supply-demand gap and fill the government’s coffers through regional electricity exports. At least 50 large (greater than 30 megawatts) hydropower plants with a combined capacity exceeding 40GW are slated for development.  The rivers that host these projects, and the ecosystems they inextricably link, are also at the core of Myanmar’s food and nutritional security. Rivalling the production of the entire lower Mekong Basin, Myanmar’s inland fisheries yield an estimated 900,000 tonnes of fish and aquaculture annually that the Food and Agriculture Organization recognises as the most important protein source in the Myanmar diet by a factor of 10 to 1.