San Francisco Frontiers - Winds of change: Laos looks up for renewables push

"The view is beautiful. They're bigger than trees," 23-year-old Toukta Phonsala told AFP inside her wooden stilt house in Dak Wai village, her baby bouncing on her lap.

Hydroelectric dams have proliferated across Southeast Asia in recent years, but production drops off in the dry season and critics lament the ecological impacts.

Experts say wind is now set to take off, and point to Laos's 600-megawatt Monsoon Wind Power Project, which began operating in August 2025, as a bankable case study.

Spanning an area the size of Singapore, the $700-million scheme is the first cross-border wind project in Asia and the largest wind farm in Southeast Asia.

Built by a Chinese state firm and owned by a Thai-led consortium, it sells electricity exclusively to Vietnam's national grid via dedicated transmission lines.

Manufacturing hub Vietnam, Southeast Asia's fastest-growing economy, was already importing hydropower from Laos, its poorest neighbour.

But "the economics are moving in favour of wind", said Tristan Bellingham, technical programme lead at nonprofit EnergyLab Asia.

"Similar to hydro 20 to 30 years ago, there's a bit of a rush on to secure concessions and development rights" for new wind projects, he told AFP.

Laos already hosts 90 hydropower plants and there are dozens more in neighbouring nations, leaving few optimal sites remaining.

- 'Better for development' -

Bellingham said other wind farms were now riding "the coattails of Monsoon", with one Laos official pointing to 10 to 15 projects under development nationwide.

For Toukta, the 18 family members she lives with and other rice and coffee farmers residing near the turbines, Monsoon has brought new roads and improved access to fresh water and healthcare.

What it has not brought to her community, however, is power.

Residents say they still experience outages during heavy storms, as Laos's own electricity infrastructure is outdated and the state utility is heavily in debt.

Still, Toukta is glad Laos can send power abroad.

"It's better for development and can bring prosperity," she said.

For Vietnam, the project offers a reliable source of less costly energy.

There were severe blackouts in 2023 when drought cut into hydropower supply, and the government warned in September of the risk of electricity shortages from next year due to delays in planned power projects and increasing demand.

Through Monsoon, "wind power is being sold significantly cheaper to Vietnam than what Vietnam is buying wind power for locally", said Thomas Jakobsen, managing director at Indochina Energy Partners.

He estimated state utility Electricity Vietnam (EVN) was paying Monsoon around six cents per kilowatt-hour -- two to four cents less than the Vietnamese rate.

Representatives of Monsoon Wind, EVN and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Monsoon project's financial arranger, declined to share the rate during a press tour last week.

- 'Something unique' -

The project is also key to Vietnam reaching net-zero emissions targets by 2050, according to Ninh Xuan Hiep, an official at EVN's National Power Transmission Corporation.

At a substation in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, he told AFP that by 2030, Laos imports would equal nearly 10 percent of Vietnam's total installed capacity -- its maximum possible production.

Monsoon Wind plans to boost capacity by 1,000 megawatts and is working to ensure some of this additional power is used inside Laos, according to general manager Narut Boakajorn.

"Laos has so much natural resources" -- wind, hydro and solar, Narut told AFP in an interview held below the spinning blades of a 110-metre-high turbine.

"Not many countries have all the good renewable energy in the same place. Laos has something unique."

The government was set to reap $180 million over the 25-year contract period, including taxes and community development and environmental protection funds, according to Narut.

He insisted nobody was forced to relocate because of the project -- although public dissent is severely restricted in communist Laos.

He said 1,600 grievances logged, mainly from farmers requesting compensation for construction impacts on their crops, were resolved.

In the shadow of the turbines, 23-year-old farmer Phonekhan Sengsopha said he was proud that electricity produced in his country was being sent to its neighbour, also a communist nation.

"Because Vietnam and Laos are like brothers. They help one another."

M.Powell--SFF