China starts building world’s biggest hydropower dam (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 days ago by Alsephina@lemmy.ml to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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Construction of the world’s biggest hydropower megadam has begun, China’s premier has said, calling it the “project of the century”. The huge structure is being built on the Yarlung Tsangpo river, in Tibetan territory.

Li Qiang made the comments on Saturday, at a ceremony in the region to mark the start of the build, leading Chinese markets to rise on the expectation of the long-planned megaproject, first announced in 2020 as part of China’s 14th five-year plan.

The project announced by Li is planned for the lower reaches of the river, according to the official state news outlet, Xinhua. Xinhua reported that the project would consist of five cascade hydropower stations, producing an estimated 300 million megawatt hours of electricity annually at a cost of about 1.2tn yuan (£124bn).

In comparison, the Three Gorges dam cost 254.2bn yuan and generates 88.2m MWh.

The Yarlung Tsangpo megadam will reportedly harness the power created by the river dropping 2km in about 50km as it winds through a canyon on a U-shaped bend.

India and Bangladesh have voiced concerns over the project, fearing the water could be held or diverted away from them.

In response, officials have said China does not seek “water hegemony” and never pursues “benefits for itself at the expense of its neighbours”.

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[-] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

5 cascades is cheating, booooooo

Also, DAMn

The lists goes on with South America and China dunking on everyone else.

[-] IWW4@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 days ago

Wow so China already has five of the top ten largest and they are adding a new number 1.

[-] FilthyShrooms@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago

They're also the world's largest carbon emitter while still having a ton of hydroelectric power

[-] KimBongUn420@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 days ago

In absolute terms sure. But the western countries export all of theirs to China by doing the production for their treats there. Also per Capita it's still less than the western average

[-] phneutral@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago

Dams are a huge problem for ecosystems. We should be abandon them not building larger and larger ones.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 days ago

You know what else is a huge problem for ecosystems, burning fossil fuels.

[-] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 2 days ago

China is aware of this problem and they recently deconstructed 3 (I think it was 3) dams for that reason. The fact that they are aware and taking action on this awareness leads me to believe that their review process for when to build a dam is a bit more robust than what we've been doing in the West (and what the West has been imposing on its subordinates).

[-] rbn@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago

I know about some disadvantages of dams but I'm not sure if - in many regions - we have much of an alternative to buffer water over different seasons. We used to have huge glaciers in the mountains which retained snow in winter and released water in summer. But as more and more glaciers disappear, we have to come up with artificial measures to store water for agriculture, drinking water etc.

If we then can harvest electricity on top, that's a nice byproduct from my perspective.