This is the great bend in Tibet -
a spectacular U-turn in the Yarlung Tsangpo river
that essentially re-routes the water
down towards India and Bangladesh.
It wraps around one of the Himalayas' tallest mountains
and at its heart
is the world's deepest and longest gorge -
the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon.
If you stretched it out in a straight line
it’d be about 50 kilometres longer
than the Grand Canyon in the US
and three times as deep.
It's huge
and that's why China has announced,
as part of its fourteenth five-year plan
that it wants to construct what it says
will be the world's
most powerful hydro-electricity dam
right here -
in one of the most remote locations
on the planet.
This is the world's most
riskiest project.
It's technically the most difficult to build.
The most expensive project ever undertaken
on any river anywhere in the world.
China has toyed with this idea
of building a dam at the Great Bend
for about two decades.
That's because of the 2000 metre drop
from one side of the bend to the other.
And while very few details of the project
have been made public,
experts believe one proposal for the site,
known as the Motuo Hydropower Station,
could involve boring a tunnel
through a 7,700m mountain.
The idea would be to
divert river water down this tunnel
to generate as much as 60 gigawatts of power.
That’s three times more energy than the world’s
biggest hydropower station,
the Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze river.
It’s nuts.
It’s completely nuts, it's like...
One of the many challenges of building here
is just how inaccessible this place is.
Until recently there wasn’t even a major road
that ran into Medog county.
But it’s also geologically and politically volatile.
For starters, it sits right on a fault line
between the tectonic plates of India and Eurasia.
The epicentre of one of
the world's most powerful earthquakes ever recorded -
a magnitude 8.6 quake in 1950,
was 200 kilometres away
in the Indian state of Assam.
Since 1901,
more than 4,000 quakes have been recorded
in the region above magnitude 4.5.
The area is also known for massive landslides.
Just upstream from the canyon
in March 2021,
a landslide partially dammed the Yarlung Tsangpo
causing the river to swell upstream.
A remarkably similar landslide
on a different river in the Indian Himalayas,
triggered a deadly flood that wiped out a bridge,
killed scores of people
and destroyed two hydropower stations downstream.
This project would also sit just kilometres
from the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh,
that China largely claims as its own.
It’s one of several disputed regions
along a poorly demarcated border,
known as the Line of Actual Control,
Since the early 1960s,
there have been a series of wars and confrontations
between India and China
in this disputed territory.
In June 2020,
a skirmish broke out
in the Galwan Valley to the north,
which resulted in the first combat related death
between the two countries since 1975.
All this is to say
that things are tense in this region
and experts think that building
the world’s most powerful hydropower facility
right near the disputed border
will only add to discontent
between the two nuclear armed neighbours.
I don't think Chinese people
will think of that as a weapon.
But India obviously
or a downstream country -
that's a big concern.
What if? You know, potentially you can.
And it’s not just the fear
of what China may do with the water
that worries those living downstream.
Research shows hydropower stations and dams
can cause devastating environmental damage to rivers as well.
One big issue is they trap sediment
that would otherwise travel downstream,
because it can cause problems with turbines.
This has been shown to cause river erosion
and can even play a role in river deltas sinking.
So with all the problems facing this project,
why risk it?
Well, part of the reason is that
China is trying to go green.
"We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030
and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.”
But it faces an uphill battle
in meeting those lofty goals
because of the country’s heavy reliance on coal
to meet its massive energy needs.
More than 60 per cent of China’s energy
comes from coal fired power stations
and it’s still building more.
In 2020,
China approved more than 38 gigawatts
of new coal power.
That brings the total amount of coal power
either in planning or development
to almost 250 gigawatts.
Building the dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo
would barely scratch the surface
of what’s required for it to reach carbon neutrality.
But Professor Wang believes
the risky project is important
because it’s indicative of the way the Chinese government
will tackle its green energy problems.
Chinese government loves the dam,
loves engineering solution.
As long as engineering can fix the problem,
they will go ahead.
For many,
China signalling that it was looking to tackle climate change
was a huge step forward
for the world’s largest emitter of CO2.
But there is concern about how it’s going about it.
Groups like International Rivers
believe dams are not the answer
and that China should be looking to
other forms of renewable energy.
I think we need to ask,
“At what cost?”
“What would be destroyed in the process?”
I think this is not the only only route
that can or should be explored to carbon neutrality.
With so much at stake on so many levels,
experts are hoping it won’t be long
before Beijing sheds
more light on exactly what it has planned
here in remote Tibet.