Designing sustainable energy futures for Myanmar

Myanmar is home to the Irrawaddy and Salween River basins, which feed and irrigate agricultural lands and ecosystems supporting around 34 million people. Taken together, these basins have an estimated hydropower potential of 100 GW, proving to be one of the largest quasi-renewable sources of energy in South-East Asia. The increased demand for energy, both locally and regionally, has led to large foreign investments aimed to identify and develop hydro-electricity dams. So far, 42 GW of potential sites have been identified. If realized, these infrastructures may support Myanmar's economic growth, but may also carry large socio-economic and environmental impacts. It is in this context that our work seeks alternative, and more sustainable, energy portfolios. Specifically, we explore the possibility of deploying renewable energy technologies—in the form of solar, wind, and biomass—to replace some of the proposed hydropower projects. To this purpose, we proceed in two steps. First, we gather data on existing and planned generation facilities (for hydropower, natural gas, coal, and renewables), and estimate Myanmar's solar, wind, and Biomass potential with the aid of meteorological, geospatial, and land use datasets. We then proceed to use these data within a capacity expansion model, with which we design alternative expansion plans based on different scenarios of investment costs, CO₂ emissions, and sustainability goals. Overall, our analysis shows that careful and targeted investments on renewables could partially offset the construction of large dams.