BEIJING (Reuters) – China has approved construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric dam, launching an ambitious project on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau that could affect millions of people downstream in India and Bangladesh.
According to China Power Construction Corporation’s 2020 forecast, the dam will be located on the lower reaches of the Brahmaputra River and will have an annual power generation capacity of 300 billion kWh.
This will more than triple the design capacity of the Three Gorges Dam in central China, currently the world’s largest, to 88.2 billion kilowatt hours.
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The plan will play an important role in achieving China’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, stimulate engineering and other related industries, and create jobs in Tibet, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.
A section of the Brahmaputra River drops as much as 2,000 meters (6,561 feet) in a span of just 50 kilometers (31 miles), providing enormous hydroelectric potential but also presenting unique engineering challenges.
The cost of dam construction, including engineering costs, is also expected to exceed that of the 254.2 billion yuan ($34.83 billion) Three Gorges Dam. This includes the resettlement of 1.4 million displaced people, more than four times the initial estimate of 57 billion yuan.
Authorities have yet to say how many people the Tibet project will displace or how it will affect the local ecosystem, one of the richest and most diverse on the plateau.
But Chinese officials say Tibet’s hydropower projects, which they say contain more than a third of China’s hydropower potential, will have no significant impact on the environment or downstream water supplies.
Still, India and Bangladesh have raised concerns about the dam because the project could alter not only the local ecology but also the flow and course of downstream rivers.
The Brahmaputra River leaves Tibet and flows southward into the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, and finally into Bangladesh where it becomes the Brahmaputra River.
China has started hydroelectric power generation on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River, which flows from Tibet to the east. It is planning more upstream projects.
(1 USD = 7.2989 RMB)
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Nicholas Yong)
