Renewable energy production

Cambodia would significantly strain its land and water resources if a projected series of large-scale hydro-power dams are built along the Mekong, according to projections released this week. Fish remains the primary source of protein and researchers [from the Australia National University in Canberra and World Wildlife Fund] ...

The economic, social and environmental consequences of the construction of dams on the Mekong River could be devastating.. ANU research suggests that millions of people are in danger of going hungry if the dams proceed. Replacing fish as a protein source with alternative food would use ...

At the turnoff of Sihanoukville outside Phnom Penhmetal shop owner Kuch Sareun watches the sparks fly as his emplyees join pieces of steel. This year, he installed a diesel-run generator at his business since the frequent electricity outages were hurting his bottom line. Electricity is ...

Thirteen percent of more than 2,500 freshwater species of fish, crabs and plants profiled across the region are under threat of extinction, a report released on Wednesday says. According to an International Union for Conservation of Nature study of freshwater biodiversity in the “Indo-Burma” region, which includes Cambodia, ...

The Cambodian government has committed to the construction of five dams along the Mekong River in order to meet a huge demand for electricity, but environmental groups warn that severe repercussions loom for this strategy. “While each project proposed in Cambodia comes with a different set ...

Thai construction company Ch Karnchang has continued work on the controversial Xayaburi dam in Laos, even as the Lao government has assured other Mekong River nations that the project is postponed pending further environmental studies, the company’s CEO said yesterday. Ch Karnchang’s CEO Plew Trivisvavet told ...

Construction of the main structure of the supposedly on-hold Xayaburi dam could begin by the end of this year, the Thai company contracted to build it said yesterday. Ch Karnchang chief executive Plew Trivisvavet said preparatory work at the site of the proposed US$3.8 billion, 1,285-megawatt ...

Work has resumed on a controversial $3.5 billion dam across the Mekong River in Laos, its Thai developer said on Thursday, contradicting Laotian assurances it had been suspended following protests over its environmental impact. Laos agreed in December to suspend the Xayaburi dam project and said ...

The sole provider of water and electricity in Koh Kong province’s Khemerak Phumin town, LYP group, was demanding that all rental buildings install water meters at exorbitant rates for the region, residents said yesterday. Building managers sent intervention papers to provincial governor Bun Leut on July ...

In an outbuilding at Lok Sear’s rice milling operation in Kandal province, two four-meter-high cylindrical machines vibrate and hum as the occasional chicken and duck pecks near the concrete blocks holding them up. While they do both feature a thinck band of aluminium around their ...

For Cambodian farmer In Chanthy, illuminating the rural night used to be tiresome task. His village in Svay Rieng province is not connected to the national electricity grid and to light the dark he would have to take car batteries to a station and pay ...

Phnom Penh: “Cambodia is needing $ 1 billion over the years or at least 100 million annual investment to develop renewable energy projects for rural electrification in order to reduce its dependence on diesel consumption,” said Mr. Toch Sovanna, Director of Departmemnt of Energy Technique, ...

For the past several days, Boonma and seven other Houay Souy villagers have travelled back to their homes near the Xayaburi Dam building site on the Lao side of the Mekong River. Since the beginning of the year they have been relocated to a new ...

Speaking to an audience of more than 150 private- and public-sector energy officials at the Second East Asia Summit Energy Efficiency Conference, officials agreed that not enough was being done to convince manufacturers and other large consumers of energy to switch to new energy efficient ...

Phnom Penh’s mountains of garbage might be keeping the city’s lights on as early as 2015 if all goes according to plan, developers and city officials have said. Under a new proposal presented to Phnom Penh Municipal Hall last Tuesday, the Green Asia Global Corporation is ...

The World Bank has blacklisted an arm of the company that carried out a much-criticised study into the Xayaburi hydro dam project, it has confirmed. According to the bank’s website, Pöyry Management Consulting Oy Finland has been banned from conducting business with the bank for three ...

Lao Foreign Minister Dr. Thongloun Sisoulith said on Friday that Laos has postponed the controversial development project of Xayaburi Dam Cambodia and Vietnam expressed their shared concerns about the construction project of the dam, which could damage and affect the environment, natural resources, and living condition of the people at the lower countries. ...

The Thai company set to build Laos’s Xayaburi hydropower dam will not begin construction until a study determines the dam’s environmental effects on the Mekong River, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on Friday. Yingluck reaffirmed her commitment to the study, which Mekong River Commission countries ...

Laos has denied it is pushing forward with the controversial Xayaburi hydropower dam in violation of international legal obligations, the country’s state media reported on Friday. Under a 1995 agreement with Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, Laos was obligated to not begin construction without a prior ...

Cambodia and Vietnam will write a joint letter to the Lao and Thai governments urging that construction of the Xayaburi dam, in northern Laos, be halted, a spokesman for the government’s Mekong committee said yesterday. Minister of Water Resources Lim Kean Hor met with Vietnam’s Minister ...

Cambodian villagers demonstrated on Friday against a controversial Lao hydropower dam that activists say is being built in defiance of an agreement to assess its potentially damaging impact on millions of people first. About 200 villagers whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River urged a halt ...

Report from tourism ministry said: in 2011, it gained 2.8 million tourist arrivals and harvested for 1.9 billion US dollars. For fourth months of 2012, we received over 1, 272,514 foreign tourists, an increase of over 27 percent if comparing the same period of last year. Tourism industry offered direct jobs of 350,000. Ministry urged to ...

A biofuel company is currently under investigation for fraud in the U.K. after millions of dollars of investors’ money was spent on a jatropha plantation in Banteay Meanchey province that never produced even a single drop of biodiesel. The company, London-based Sustainable Agro Energy PLC, had ...

A delegation of Chinese officials yesterday donated two airplanes and signed an agreement to provide Cambodia with loans for a new hydropower dam in Battambang and the renovation of two national roads. The deals were made during a meeting in Phnom Penh between He Guoqiang, a ...