Press

CWR releases “No River, No Power – Can Asia’s river power growth in a changing climate?”, which mapped a third of global power generation capacity (1.9TW) and finds sizeable trifecta exposure to water risks across 10 key rivers from the Yangtze, Yellow, Indus, Ganges, to the Mekong (10 HKH Rivers):

 

1. 1. Almost half of this (865GW) are in the 10 HKH River Basins – this is more than the total GW of the G7 ex-US;
   2. Over 94% of the 865GW needs water to generate electricity; and
   3. Almost 330GW or 38% of power GW clustered in 10 basins are located in areas that are arid or already face ‘High’ to ‘Extremely High’ water stress.

The report shows clear national energy security challenges for 16 countries from India, China, Pakistan, Laos, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Nepal to Bhutan – there is high energy dependence on single to multiple rivers.

Findings are shocking but timely. Already, last year, we saw Yangtze droughts disrupt power supply and wreak havoc across global supply chains while Indus floods displaced over 30 million people and devastated Pakistan’s economy.

Yet the report cautions that worse is still to come …the stats are compelling so dip into the report and you will never look at power and rivers in the same way again.