More Lao wind energy import projects are on the horizon. Danish renewables investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Vietnamese developer Fecon have proposed a 1 GW onshore wind project in Savannakhet province in southern Laos, mainly intended to power manufacturing hubs in Vietnam.
Vietnam’s revised PDP has increased the country’s ambitions for its own non-hydro renewable generation. Compared to its 2023 targets of producing around 43 GW from solar, wind and biomass by 2030, the revised PDP raises this figure to at least 75 GW.
Cambodia has had difficulty powering rapid urbanisation. Unplanned growth in cities like Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville has left authorities scrambling to keep pace with energy demand, which in 2025 increased by around 14 per cent nationwide from the year before.
Energy security has been helped by increases in solar, but the country still struggles with reliable energy, further strained by factors like the Strait of Hormuz crisis which has led to volatile prices of imported fuel.
Cambodia imports around 200 MW of hydropower from the Don Sahong dam in Laos, controversial for its impacts on downstream fisheries and the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin. Cambodian civil society organisations have long pushed back against hydropower projects in the country and region. In 2020, the country implemented a 10-year ban on new dam projects on its mainstream Mekong, citing a need to diversify energy sources.
In the long run, Cambodia aims to continue importing power from Laos at a stable level, according to its Power Development Plan of 2022. This is expected to increase to around 3 GW by 2030 and remain the same until 2040.
But it hopes to eventually expand power sharing with Laos through one of the region’s most ambitious plans: a power grid connecting the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). The initiative, which has been in the works since 1997, is a plan to eventually share energy across all members of the bloc, in both mainland and maritime Southeast Asia.
In May 2026, the Asean Centre for Energy, Electricité du Cambodge and Electricité du Laos signed a joint study framework to advance cross-border connections, as part of a phased approach to advancing the Asean Power Grid. The framework involves collaboration on technical assessments, economic analysis and preliminary environmental assessments for future projects.
Laos and Cambodia took a major step towards regional grid interconnectivity in 2023 when they launched a high-capacity China-built 500-kilovolt transmission line linking a substation in Champasak province in south-western Laos to its border with Cambodia.
Malaysia and Singapore: End of the line?
Neither Malaysia nor Singapore share a border with Laos, so the Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP), launched in 2022, has been hailed as a broad advancement for the Asean Power Grid.
From Laos, energy largely created by hydropower is sent through Thailand, which acts as a “wheeler” country to send electricity through to Malaysia and subsequently Singapore. The city-state began importing 100 MW from this system in 2022, making the LTMS-PIP’s first multilateral cross-border electricity trade through four Asean countries – all from Laos’ hydropower dams.
The capacity of tradable electricity was increased to 200 MW in the project’s second phase, launched in January 2026. This phase introduced multidirectional electricity trading, with Singapore importing the additional 100 MW from Malaysia.
Imported hydropower from Laos is part of how Singapore seeks to achieve its climate goals, but experts have raised concerns about the environmental impacts of Lao and Mekong dams, noting that it is more than just counting carbon.
Nevertheless, Singapore’s energy needs are helping to drive the Asean Power Grid ever further as the Sarawak to Singapore undersea connection is expected to have some engineering design studies complete by end-2026. The hydropower produced for export will come from Malaysian Borneo, with the project estimated to transmit a proposed 1 GW of energy by around 2035.
China: The battery’s builder
In April, the China-Laos cross-border power transmission line began operations, opening China’s domestic electricity market to Laos’ renewable energy generators. But Chinese involvement in Laos’ hydropower sector stretches back two decades.
Today, many of Laos’ planned and completed Mekong mainstream hydropower dams have some involvement from Chinese companies, from ownership to loans and development at different levels. Major dam projects Pak Beng and Sanakham cost at least US$2 billion each to build and are majority-owned by Chinese companies, while others like Don Sahong and Pak Lay have Chinese infrastructure developers.
Chinese companies have also helped build big dam projects on Mekong tributaries, such as the Nam Ou hydropower cascade, as well as non-hydro renewable projects like the 1 GW Oudomxay Solar Farm, the largest in Southeast Asia.
China’s development of Laos’ domestic resources has led to some pushback. These include strategic multilateralism concerns from the US about regional influence, and public opposition to mega-project dams due to their environmental and social impacts. Legal disputes have also arisen related to dam projects developed by China. For instance, in 2025, state-owned company PowerChina sued Electricite du Laos for US$555 million in unpaid dues for the Nam Ou hydropower project, reported Reuters.
With more hydropower dams planned for the Mekong mainstream coinciding with promises to expand energy exports, non-hydro renewable energy and the potential ASEAN power grid, the Battery of Southeast Asia could look very different in the future.
This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under a Creative Commons licence.