How a systems-scale approach can solve Myanmar’s electrification woes and more

Environmental advocates are calling for a holistic, streamlined approach to building out Myanmar’s hydropower sector, which is attracting growing interest from donors and investors, including multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank as well as countries such as China.

Systems-scale planning, can help encapsulate sustainability, environment, economic and social concerns into projects’ design, implementation and impact, said Jeff Opperman, lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy’s Great Rivers Program. The approach looks at and guides design and implementation of projects based on a system — such as river basins or lakes — and not as individual projects that are not well-coordinated and which can lead to inefficiencies, conflicts, degradation and missed opportunities.

Myanmar is perhaps the most endowed country in terms of hydropower potential in all of Southeast Asia with 10 river basins that can generate more than 100 gigawatts of power to light up and electrify millions of households all over the former pariah nation. Yet in reality, only about a third of Myanmar’s more than 50 million citizens have access to electricity, and only 16 percent of the rural population are connected to the grid.