Please see the below article from EPIC Investment Partners detailing their discussions on China’s Hydro Infrastructure project. Received this morning 16/09/2025.
Construction officially began in July on what is likely to be the biggest infrastructure project in history. Beijing first laid out definitive proposals for the dam back in 2021.
The Yarlung Tsangpo river flows from the melting glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau, cutting a sharp U-turn around Namcha Barwa, the highest peak in Nyingchi prefecture, before plunging more than 2,000 meters over a 50-kilometer stretch forming one of the world’s deepest canyons and an irresistible source of hydropower potential. Engineers plan to drill tunnels from the top of the bend to the bottom, channelling water through multiple turbines before sending it back into its natural course. It is a system designed to minimize upstream and downstream disruption. The project should significantly cut China’s dependence on coal which still powers more than half the national grid.
To put the size of the project into context, the project will consume sixty times the cement of the Hoover Dam, more steel than over one hundred Empire State Buildings and enough concrete to build a two-lane highway around the Earth five times. Another way to understand the full scale of this $167bn project is to compare it to the $37 billion Three Gorges Dam – the world’s largest power plant. The hydropower project, with a potential capacity as high as seventy gigawatts, could generate three hundred terawatt-hours a year (roughly equivalent to the UK’s total annual electricity consumption).
There are several difficulties. The project lies in a seismically volatile region. The 1950 8.6 magnitude Assam-Tibet earthquake, one of the strongest ever recorded on land, happened just 150 miles away from Nyingchi. Engineers plan to drill tunnels from the top of the bend to the bottom, channelling water through turbines before sending it back into its natural course. This raises multiple ecological issues, not least the impact on water flows to the Indian subcontinent.
The economic impact to the Tibet region will be considerable. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created while it is estimated that project will add perhaps 0.2% to China’s GDP each year. Construction of transmission lines will allow the plant to serve China’s industrial east coast and southern regions like Hong Kong as well as poorer western areas such as Tibet itself.
It is an audacious project but carries considerable economic and environmental risks.
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Alex Clare
16/09/2025