New Delhi: India is working on setting up an energy-efficient power transmission (HDVC) line to Nepal and Bhutan as part of its energy security plans, external affairs minister Salman Khurshid said on Thursday.   India’s long-term plans include a grid linking South-east Asian nations with those of South Asia, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, the minister said while outlining ambitious schemes to bui ...

France and Britain are only separated by a narrow strait, but when it comes to nuclear cooperation, the two neighbors need the Chinese to build a bridge. The two European countries have been planning to build two nuclear reactors in Somerset, England, but the agreement was reached only after two Chinese companies decided to join the project with the promise of hefty investment. The importance of the Chinese ...

South Korea is looking to cut its reliance on nuclear power to 29 percent of the country's total power supply by 2035, the least amount of reduction recommended by a group urging the government to cut dependence on nuclear-fired generators. Asia's fourth-largest economy has been under pressure to cut nuclear power use due to a scandal that started late last year and shut some reactors that had received repl ...

Armstrong Asset Management, a Singapore-based private-equity company, expects investments from its first Southeast Asian clean-energy fund to total as much as $1.2 billion. The fund will focus on the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand where renewables policy support is “more advanced,” Armstrong Managing Partner Andrew Affleck said by e-mail. While chiefly interested in solar and mini-hydropower, it’s look ...

The private sector lending arm of the World Bank says it has teamed up with business groups to ensure that hydropower projects are developed and operated in a sustainable way in Laos, which has come under fire from green groups for building dams with little regard for the environment.

Under the new partnership, and over the course of the next year, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Lao Na ...

SOUTH KOREA-based Mirae Asia Energy Corp. plans to proceed with construction of its 20-megawatt (MW) solar power plant in Ilocos Norte next month, a senior company official told reporters late Thursday.   “We will be completing our financial closing within this month. We already have all the necessary permits,” Lito A Badua, Mirae Asia vice-president, said at the sidelines of the Energy Investment Foru ...

Singapore-based Solar charger maker, Third wave power, expects a strong demand for its power packages in rural India. "We expect demand for portable solar charges to reach a high of 40 million units in the next five years in rural India, including small towns," Third Wave's co-founder and chief executive officer VS Hariharan said here today. ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will help bring more reliable and affordable electricity to Bali with a US$224 million loan for a transmission project that will connect rural households to the grid and help power the tourism industry. “A more reliable power supply should allow greater growth in the industrial and commercial sectors, particularly in tourism, which should in turn create jobs, especially for ...

ISLAMABAD, Dec 3: About 1.3 billion people in the world are living without electricity; two-thirds of them being in 10 countries and four of them, including Pakistan, in the Asia Pacific region, says a report of the United Nations. According to the Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific-2013 released by a UN commission on Tuesday, an estimated 60 per cent of capacity-addition efforts in future will b ...

Himachal Pradesh will soon get another tranche of a multimillion-dollar loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for the construction of a hydropower project, a minister said here Tuesday. "ADB has agreed in principle to finance the 48 MW Surgani Sundla hydro-electric project in Chamba district," Power Minister Sujan Singh Pathania told reporters here. The state-run Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation (HPP ...