electricity News

SANTARÉM, Brazil, and BERLIN — I got off the mototaxi, a means of transportation that is part of everyday life in several cities in the Amazon, took off the helmet…

BENGKULU, Indonesia — Hearings in a lawsuit filed by residents over a newly built Chinese-funded coal-fired power plant in Sumatra have revealed a litany of irregularities behind the permit that…

SAHANIVOTRY COMMUNE, Madagascar — The village of Farihitsara in Madagascar’s central highlands was littered with straw from the rice harvest when Mongabay visited in May. But people weren’t able to…

JAKARTA — Investigators in Indonesia have charged the head of the state-owned power utility with corruption in connection to a coal-fired plant being built in Sumatra. The Corruption Eradication Commission,…

As part of a wave of rural violence sweeping Amazonia, dam activist Dilma Ferreira Silva, her husband and a friend were brutally murdered last Friday; a large scale landowner is in custody.

This month’s nationwide blackout forced citizens to deforest parks for firewood, to pull water from polluted rivers, and resulted in the death of hospitalized babies and endangered wildlife.

JAKARTA — Usman’s been glued to the TV news lately. A young fisherman living in Batang, along the northeastern coast of Indonesia’s main island of Java, Usman is closely following…

Alcoa, Vale Mining, Suez Energy, Camargo Corrêa Energia, and Brazil’s government promised the town of Formosa mega-dam reparations, a pledge never fulfilled.

South American bats speak dialects different from those of their North American counterparts. In response, a group of scientists has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for acoustic identification…

JAKARTA — A planned hydroelectric dam that threatens the world’s most endangered great ape is already having an impact, days after a ringing endorsement from Indonesian officials and academics. On…

JAKARTA — Officials in the Indonesian province of Aceh have vowed to safeguard the last known habitat shared by tigers, orangutans, rhinos and elephants, but concerns abound that the proposed…

JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter, has significantly scaled back its electricity output plans to boost the share of renewables, but will remain heavily reliant on coal. The…

Nearly 100,000 small hydropower dams exist or are planned worldwide, and science has done little to study or inform policymakers about cumulative environmental impacts.

Study: 142 existing and under construction Andean dams are fragmenting the Amazon, putting ecosystems at risk and impacting up to 30 million people. Another 160 dams are planned.

Operational in 2016, the Belo Monte mega-dam has done lasting damage to forests, fisheries, livelihoods, and indigenous and traditional communities (photo story).

Flood pulses, important to Amazon basin aquatic and terrestrial ecology, are being severely impacted by both large and small hydropower dams.

In 2018, expect more Amazon assaults by the Temer administration, as indigenous and environmental resistance builds, with court rulings and October elections adding uncertainty.

In a major policy shift, the Brazilian government says it is abandoning plans for new mega-dams in the Amazon basin, a victory for conservationists and indigenous groups.

President Temer, pressed by the ruralist lobby, attacked indigenous and traditional land rights, conserved lands, and Amazon forests this year, and retreated from Brazil's Paris climate goal – analysis.

Habitat fragmentation and biomass reduction on isolated forest islands at the Balbina dam – with trees replaced by lianas – resulted in increased carbon emissions.