Laos Signs $1.45 Billion Agreement with China for Clean Energy Project

Laos has signed a $1.45 billion clean energy deal with a Chinese power equipment maker in its continued quest to increase clean power generation and transmission.

China Western Power Industrial, with a Singaporean contractor, signed an agreement with the Xekong Thermal Power Plant of Laos to design, supply, and construct a 1,800-megawatt clean power project in southern Laos, as noted in a Monday filing by the Sichuan-based company to the stock exchange.

The project will be completed by early 2030, and initial design blueprints are supposed to be complete by the end of this year. The filing, however, did not identify the source of the energy for the new power plant.

Also on the same day, China Western Power obtained a $228.8 million power transmission project contract with the same Laotian firm.

This transaction comes after a $409 million power and service deal the company entered into in 2022 with another power company in Laos. Also, in the previous year, a Chinese state-owned power firm signed a deal to increase a wind and solar power base in northern Laos.

Laos, a mountainous country, has gotten about 80 percent of its electricity supply during the last ten years from hydropower but has struggled to increase solar and wind power. Exports of electricity, which go mainly to neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam, are still a major component of the economic plan for Laos and earned it the reputation of "the battery of Southeast Asia."