Laos signs clean energy agreement worth $1.45 billion with Chinese industrial company

Laos signed a clean energy agreement worth $1.45 billion with a Chinese manufacturer of power plant equipment as it continues its drive to generate and transmit clean electricity.

China Western Power Industrial and a Singaporean construction company signed an agreement with Xekong Thermal Power Plant, Laos. The project will design, supply and build a 1,800 megawatt clean energy power plant in southern Laos. This was revealed in a filing on the Sichuan stock exchange by the Sichuan based company.

The project will be completed at the beginning of 2020, and the initial designs should be complete by the end this year.

The project's energy source was not specified in the filing.

The Chinese company signed an agreement with the same Laotian firm for a power transmission contract worth $228,8 million.

China Western Power will sign a $409 million supply and service agreement with another Laos power company by 2022.

A Chinese state-owned energy company signed an agreement last year with Laos for the expansion of a wind and a solar energy base in northern Laos.

Laos is a mountainous nation that has produced about 80% its electricity through hydropower in the past decade, but has struggled with increasing its solar and wind energy.

Laos is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia that has been called the "battery of Southeast Asia" for its electricity exports to Thailand and Vietnam. (Reporting and editing by Xiuhao chen and Ryan Woo)

(source: Reuters)