saysetha Small Hydropower Project
Clean Energy from Hydropower
Saysetha, Laos*
Laos has considerable potential to produce hydropower, but the country is currently lacking of necessary economic resources to provide electricity services to rural communities.
This hydropower project helps solve this problem by generating sustainable power for the rural communities and reducing at the same time the need for firewood. Firewood represents the large part of primary energy consumption in Laos and contributes to drastically shrinking tropical forests in the country.
Since the demand for power supply to rural regions continues to increase, Laos needs to switch to sustainable energy options so as to save its forests and at the same time reduce or limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The climate protection project emphasizes on the large potential of Laos water power and supplies the region, especially the rural communities, with electricity from this sustainable energy source.
Thanks to the reduced demand for firewood, forests and vegetation can once again recover, while the hydropower project saves 50,000 tons of greenhouse gases annually.
The project contributes to sustainable development in the project area, by creating jobs, improving local infrastructure and implementing a water supply program for villagers.
*laos
With the solar bus and sensitization against climate change!
They have been on the way since 2013, the painted bus with 14 seats, with solar panels on the roof, a 4.3 meter projection screen on the outside, to project educational films in the area of climate change and the 8 meters long van equipped with laptop, TV set, microphone and speakers.
They travel through the Laos Democratic People’s Republic with the assignment to convey playfully education on general environmental protection, biodiversity and climate change. The project is a cooperation between the local Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) and the German Development Agency GIZ (German Agency for International Development).
The Lao economy is heavily dependent on the natural resources of the country. Through the overexploitation of forests, the overhunting of animals and the granting of large-scale land concessions for water power plants, mining and industrial agriculture, large forest areas, the living animals and plants including the local biodiversity disappear. In addition, climate change threatens some of the country’s main sources of income, such as floating rice farming. The effects of climate change, such as floods and droughts, will mainly affect the rural population whose livelihoods are forest ecosystems and small farms.
Most rural Laos people know little about the links between sustainable development and environmental protection – this also applies to decision makers in politics and business. These issues hardly play a role in public discussions.
We support climate protection projects from Laos, because we find it important to address climate change with sensitization since the childhood
