Rethinking hydropower in Myanmar

Rethinking hydropower in Myanmar

Since Myanmar's phased transition to democracy began in 2010, the
resource-rich country of 53 million consumers has had one of Asia's fastest
growing economies.

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 (less 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.

If developed as planned, the 50 large hydropower projects would permanently
segment watersheds, flatten the peaks and valleys of the flood pulse and
trap nutrient-rich sediment behind dams. The productivity of inland
fisheries would gradually erode, annually inundated floodplains would shrink
and the country's "rice bowl" - the Ayeyarwady Delta - would be denied the
fertile silt and water flows essential to sustaining yields.

The Myanmar government's hydropower development plans have therefore
inspired waves of opposition from project area and downstream communities,
civil society organisations and NGOs. Numerous large-scale projects planned
for upland ethnic areas are also frustrating efforts to secure a Nationwide
Ceasefire Agreement.

Reasonable and reliable electricity is a prerequisite to economic growth and
social development. But must it come at the expense of increased conflict or
Myanmar's age-old rice-fish agricultural systems and the lives, livelihoods
and deep cultural traditions it embodies?

The International Financial Corporation is leading efforts to answer this
question through a countrywide Strategic Environmental Assessment aimed at
helping policymakers, developers and investors improve sectoral planning.
The study represents a critical step to better understanding and mitigating
the environmental and social risks of widespread hydropower development.
However, its implementation will take time, and Myanmar needs power now.

Energy leapfrogging and the megatrend 'Ds'

Driven by the plummeting costs of mobile connectivity, Myanmar's mobile
phone subscriber base skyrocketed from 5.1 million users in January 2014 to
43 million users by April 2016 - that's nearly 1.4 million new users per
month. These numbers led analysts to predict that Myanmar would become "not
just a mobile-first environment, but a mobile-only market".

Much of today's modern power infrastructure, especially in Myanmar, is the
metaphorical equivalent of the operator-managed, landline call centres of
the 1950s. Large, centrally-located and dispatched generating assets push
power, typically in a single direction, across vast transmission and
distribution networks to end users.

A similar, smartphone-like disruption looms over the power sector. It has
often been summed up as the three megatrend "Ds": decentralisation
(generating power closer to where it is consumed), decarbonisation (reducing
the use of fossil fuels in favour of renewable) and digitization, or the
internet of energy (the fine-grained monitoring and control of electricity
flows to optimise transmission and distribution).

Globally, technological advancements driving down the costs of wind, solar
and mini-grids are spurring decentralisation and decarbonisation, and slowly
chipping away at the long-held monopoly of large fossil fuel facilities on
economies of scale. Hydropower is poised to play an important role in
accelerating these trends, particularly in monsoonal climates where solar
and water resources share an inverse and thus complementary relationship.

New material and design innovations are, for example, contributing to the
development of more cost-effective and modular hydropower turbines and
related cost-saving civil works innovations. Coupled with our improved
understanding of the costs of ecosystem damage, the economics of hydropower
are shifting, making smaller, utility-scale projects more economically
viable.

How can distributed hydropower help Myanmar?

Not unlike mobile telecoms infrastructure, the development of decentralised
hydropower resources offers Myanmar an accelerated and more equitable
pathway to unlocking the benefits of reliable and affordable electricity.

Integrated networks of distributed hydropower projects have less impact, are
more socially acceptable and rapidly deployable at scale, yet are capable of
providing utility-scale power to address Myanmar's urgent electricity supply
shortfalls.

Distributed hydropower projects can also incorporate water supply and
irrigation systems to amplify the positive effects of improved energy access
with dual-use infrastructure that serves other social and economic purposes.

A distributed approach to hydropower development may also help ease tensions
between the government and ethnic groups by ensuring the benefits of
electricity access and economic development are more quickly extended to
isolated upland areas through hybrid mini-grids. Once integrated with the
national grid, these mini-grids could be leveraged to provide high-value
grid services, creating the technical space to enhance the resilience of and
decarbonise Myanmar's national grid with large-scale intermittent
renewables.

Distributed hydropower is by no means the only solution to Myanmar's energy
needs. Some large hydropower projects will be developed, and should be when
the environmental and social costs of projects are minimal and the affected
communities agree.

As stewards of the planet's resources, however, we have a moral obligation
to, and an existential interest in, promoting low carbon development
pathways that minimise the impact on the ecosystem, especially when their
presence disproportionately benefits society's most vulnerable.

In this regard, policymakers, developers and investors would be wise to
consider distributed hydropower as an accelerated and utility-enhancing
solution to help meet Myanmar's pressing electricity, water and sanitation
needs.

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Link to Original Article:
https://www.mmtimes.com/news/rethinking-hydropower-myanmar.html

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com