China’s electrical energy use during the last 30 years is a hockey-stick curve, climbing steeply because the nation industrialized, constructed dozens of mega-cities, and have become the world’s manufacturing middle. Although China’s financial system has slowed lately, electrical energy demand is simply climbing. Given the nation has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, they’re going to want rather more renewable energy than they presently have.
To assist them obtain that objective, the federal government lately introduced plans to construct the largest hydropower dam on the planet.
Medog Hydropower Station, as it will likely be known as, will blow different hydropower dams out of the water (pun meant), with an estimated annual era capability triple that of the world’s largest present dam (which, maybe unsurprisingly, can be in China). The 60-gigawatt challenge will be capable of generate as much as 300,000 gigawatt-hours (or 300 terawatt-hours) of electrical energy per 12 months. That’s equal to Greece’s annual power consumption.
The dam might be constructed on a river in Tibet known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, with building carried out by the government-owned Energy Building Company of China. It is not going to solely be considered one of China’s largest infrastructure tasks ever, it will likely be one of the costly infrastructure tasks ever, with an estimated price of a trillion yuan or $136 billion (sure, billion with a “b”).
Maybe unsurprisingly, China is already residence to the world’s largest present hydropower dam: Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River stands 594 ft tall (Arizona’s Hoover Dam is taller, however Three Gorges is wider) and has a producing capability of 22.5 gigawatts. By comparability, the largest hydropower dam within the US is the Grand Coulee in Washington state, and it has a producing capability of 6.8 gigawatts. China is the world chief in hydropower deployment, accounting for nearly a 3rd of world hydropower capability. A lot of these dams are on the Yangtze (a few of them constructed by robots!) and a few are on the identical river the place the Medog challenge might be constructed.
The Yarlung Tsangpo river begins in western Tibet, flowing east after which south, the place it merges with India’s Brahmaputra then flows south by means of Bangladesh and into the Bay of Bengal. It’s the highest river on the planet, and a 31-mile (50-kilometer) part within the South Tibet Valley drops by a pointy 6,561 ft (2,000 meters); there’s a great deal of untapped potential for all that shifting water to show some generators on its approach down.
However the challenge isn’t with out its challenges, each engineering and political.
Environmental teams say the dam will disrupt ecosystems on the biodiverse Tibetan Plateau. Tibetan rights teams see the challenge as a chief instance of China exploiting Tibet’s pure assets whereas harming native communities. The dam’s building would require folks to be relocated, although probably not as many as Three Gorges, which uprooted and moved 1.4 million folks. The Medog dam might be greater, but it surely’s in a extra sparsely populated space.
India and Bangladesh have each expressed considerations concerning the dam, because it might alter the movement of the river downstream the place it runs by means of these nations. There are additionally considerations concerning the space’s geological stability, because it sits on the convergence of the Indian and Eurasian continental plates and is taken into account tectonically energetic. An earthquake might destroy the dam and trigger catastrophic flooding. In actual fact, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake killed 126 folks and broken 4 reservoirs simply final week.
Nonetheless, Medog gained’t be a traditional dam within the type of one big wall constructed to carry water behind it, like Three Gorges or the Hoover Dam. As an alternative, 4 12.4-mile (20-kilometer) tunnels might be blasted and excavated by means of a mountain known as Namcha Barwa to divert the river. The water flowing by means of these tunnels will flip generators hooked up to turbines earlier than operating again into the Yarlung Tsangpo.
The Chinese language authorities says the Medog challenge will assist it obtain the nation’s carbon neutrality targets. In 2023, coal was nonetheless China’s fundamental supply of electrical energy era by a protracted shot, supplying 61 % of the nation’s electrical energy. Hydropower was a distant second at 13 %, adopted by wind, photo voltaic, nuclear, and fuel, in that order.
Building is slated to begin in 2029, and if all goes as deliberate—which might be spectacular for a challenge of this scale—it would take 4 years to finish, with the dam starting industrial operation in 2033.
