China Breaks Ground for World’s Largest Hydropower Station

China has started construction of what would be the world’s largest hydropower dam. Chinese Premier Li Qiang on July 19 led a ceremony marking groundbreaking for the Motuo Hydropower Station, a project with an estimated cost of $167 billion that could generate as much as three times the electricity of the 22.5-GW Three Gorges project.

Three Gorges, currently the world’s largest hydro installation, achieved full commercial operation in 2012. Officials have said the Motuo facility, with planned generation capacity of more than 60 GW, could produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. It is being built within a section of the Yarlung Tsangpo river, where the waterway drops more than 6,500 feet in a span of 31 miles, which officials have said offers huge hydropower potential.

The Motuo project has sparked concerns about how the new dam could enable China to control the Yarlung Tsangpo river, which flows south into India and also Bangladesh. Those concerns particularly include how China’s control of the river could impact India’s economy. The river runs through Tibet, and also the Arunachal Pradesh state of India. It is the longest river in Tibet and the fifth longest in China.

Li on Saturday called the hydropower station a “project of the century.” The premier said China is emphasizing “ecological conservation to prevent environmental damage” from the project.

Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu, speaking with the PTI news agency earlier this month, said the Siang and Brahmaputra rivers, which flow from Yarlung Tsangpo in India, could “dry up considerably” once the dam was completed. Khandu told PTI the dam “going to cause an existential threat to our tribes and our livelihoods. It is quite serious because China could even use this as a sort of ‘water bomb’.”

“Suppose the dam is built and they suddenly release water, our entire Siang belt would be destroyed,” Khandu said. “In particular, the Adi tribe and similar groups … would see all their property, land, and especially human life, suffer devastating effects.” Officials with India’s government have talked with Chinese officials about the dam’s potential impacts, emphasizing the “need for transparency and consultation with downstream countries,” according to news reports.

India has its own plans to build a hydropower dam on the Siang river. Officials have said that installation could provide a buffer against sudden water releases from the Motuo, and also serve as a flood control measure. China has long said it has a right to dam the Yarlung Tsangpo, and officials also have said the project is being built with consideration for downstream impacts.

Chinese officials have not indicated how many people the project would displace. Some groups, including the International Campaign for Tibet, have said the dam will have a major negative impact on the Tibetan plateau. They argue that millions of people downstream of the project will be impacted.

The Motuo project would be built along the Yarlung Tsangpo in a large canyon, where the river makes a turn around the Namcha Barwa mountain. The area, called the “Great Bend,” is a location where the river as noted earlier drops hundreds of feet in elevation. Reports have said the project would include several tunnels, as long as 20 kilometers (12.4 miles), through the mountain that would divert the river.

A recent report from the Xinhua news service said engineers would work to straighten the river and “diver water through tunnels” to five power stations. Xinhua also said the dam’s power would be used in Tibet, but primarily would be delivered to other areas of China, as part of the country’s efforts to produce power in western regions that would be used in the country’s larger cities in the eastern part of China.

The Yarlung Zangbo becomes the Brahmaputra river as it leaves Tibet and flows south into India’s Arunachal Pradesh and Assam states and finally into Bangladesh.

“The construction of the Yarlung Zangbo hydropower project is a matter within the scope of China’s sovereign affairs,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement issued July 22. “China has also conducted necessary communication with downstream countries regarding hydrological information, flood control, and disaster mitigation cooperation related to the Yarlung Zangbo project.”

—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.