Although hydropower is well placed to play a central role in the Asian energy transition, the region is being challenged by rising electricity demands, whilst managing shared water resources in the face of growing climatic variability.
With reduced water availability being a significant constraint on hydropower generation, this can increase project risk and uncertainty.
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Across Central Asia, 2025 was one of the driest years for decades, with precipitation falling to around 80% of the long-term average. Kyrgyzstan’s Toktogul plant and Tajikistan’s Nurek plant neared historic lows, prompting both countries to implement electricity demand restrictions to prevent blackouts.
Cross-border cooperation has been key to government response. In February 2026, the heads of energy departments in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan met to continue discussing water and energy coordination, even committing to mutual electricity support and joint reservoir management.
Recent research by Keyser et al has reviewed past, present and future prospects for hydropower across Central Asia, explaining that the region, which spans Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, is marked by diverse geography and climatic diversity, leading to an uneven availability of water.
Since the 1950s, the authors say Central Asia has experienced a significant upward trend in average annual temperatures. Expected to continue, it poses significant challenges to water availability. Decreased glacial mass across the mountainous regions of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will further exacerbate these challenges.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has also had a lasting impact on Central Asia’s water management strategies and energy sector development. As it implemented a top-down, centralised management approach, according to Keyser et al, newly independent states across the region “faced significant challenges in adapting to the management of shared energy resources without the centralised coordination they were accustomed to”.
In their paper published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, the authors go on to state: “This shift has led to a competitive dynamic among the Central Asian countries, where concerns over energy security are now deeply intertwined with socio-political factors and the legacy of Soviet policies… Today,” they add, “Central Asia’s energy landscape is complex.”
In their analysis, Keyser et al also developed the HP:CA, which they describe as being an extensive open-source, regionally harmonised geodatabase of 249 hydropower plants across Central Asia. The dataset classifies plants by size, storage type, hydraulic head and original purpose, enabling detailed insights into historical development and future trajectories. According to this, there are currently 167 plants generating 47.2TW-hours per year, with a capacity of 13.4GW across Central Asia. However, reliance on hydropower varies greatly. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan produce 90% of electricity through hydropower, but, in contrast, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan’s share remains less than 10%.
Although around two-thirds of Central Asia’s hydropower plants are small-scale (≤10MW), they contribute only 2% of total installed capacity. In contrast, the two largest plants alone account for 30% of the region’s hydroelectric production.
Looking in more detail, this research found that Tajikistan has the largest installed hydropower capacity in the region, with a total of 5.2GW distributed across 31 identified plants. Hydropower is the country’s primary source of electricity, accounting for 89.4% of total generation, and relies on large-scale hydropower plants, notably the Nurek plant with an installed capacity of 3GW, currently the largest in Central Asia.
Kyrgyzstan follows closely behind with 32 hydropower plants and a total installed capacity of 3.2GW, which contribute 85.9% of the country’s total electricity generation. Kazakhstan boasts 49 operating hydropower plants with 2.8GW of installed capacity. With the largest number of facilities in operation by any country in Central Asia, Uzbekistan has 53 plants with a combined capacity of 2.1GW. Turkmenistan has two hydropower plants with an installed capacity of just 17.2MW.
The region still holds significant untapped hydropower potential and, the authors claim, ambitious political intentions exist to harness this potential in the coming decades. They believe shared challenges present opportunities for regional collaboration through joint ventures, transboundary planning and investment alignment. A basin-wide, nexus-based policy approach is essential to ensure that future hydropower development is sustainable, resilient, and aligned with national and regional goals.
Outlook for Asia
According to the International Hydropower Association’s (IHA) 2026 World Hydropower Outlook, with a current pipeline including 51GW of hydropower projects under construction, alongside a further 33GW at advanced stages of development, there has recently been strong progress across South and Central Asia, driven by Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan. This points to high expectations for hydropower deployment to accelerate in the region over the next five to ten years, the IHA adds.
Hydropower modernisation and infrastructure renewal are also seen as low-risk pathways to adapting to shifting regional hydrological patterns. In India, for example, where roughly one-third of the hydropower fleet is more than 30 years old, renovation and modernisation programmes are increasingly focused on upgrading ageing assets to improve efficiency, extend operational life and unlock additional capacity.
India’s power system is described as changing rapidly, creating a growing need for flexible generation and long-duration electricity storage. Supported by ambitious government targets, policy reforms and private sector investment, the Indian hydropower sector, particularly pumped storage, is thus entering a new phase of accelerated development. In fact, during 2025, India overtook Russia to become the world’s fifth-largest country for total installed hydropower capacity, when it added more than 4GW of new hydropower capacity. With an estimated pumped storage potential of almost 288GW, India has one of largest opportunities globally.
Measures including financial support and faster approvals have been introduced to facilitate pumped storage development, helping to drive the country towards its goal of 100GW of pumped storage capacity by 2035–36.
Pumped storage is also being championed by China. The country has more than 300GW of hydropower currently under construction, including 217.5GW of pumped storage. Accounting for more than 40% of global hydropower capacity additions in 2025, the IHA says the country’s continued global leadership in hydropower shows no signs of slowing. During 2025, China officially began construction on the Yarlung Zangbo River Hydropower Project, which is set to become the world’s largest hydropower facility and generate three times as much electricity as the Three Gorges Dam. The first unit of the 1.7GW Zhejiang Tiantai Pumped Storage Plant was also commissioned, along with full commissioning of the 1.4GW Ninghai Pumped Storage facility.
Mekong collaboration
The Mekong River Commission (MRC) recently brought together water resource leaders from the US, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam to strengthen international cooperation in sustainable water and resource management.
The exchange focused on critical topics such as water management, technology and innovation for real-time simulation, as well as Drone Lidar Technology. Delegations from the MRC, the Mississippi River Commission (MiRC-USA) and the Pacific Ocean Division (POD) of the US Army Corps of Engineers engaged in workshops and discussions aimed at developing innovative and collaborative solutions. There was also a site visit to the Kholong Lat Pho Flood Diversion project.
“This exchange reflects a shared commitment to deliver – bringing together engineering, data and experience to address real challenges on our rivers,” said Major General Kimberly Peeples, president of MiRC-USA. “By applying what works and strengthening how we operate, we improve reliability, reduce risk and support long-term economic stability for the communities we serve.”
Busadee Santipitaks, CEO of the MRC Secretariat, said that although their rivers may well be thousands of kilometres apart, the challenges they face are very similar and they can learn directly from one another.
Army Brigadier General Joseph Goetz, POD Commanding General, spoke about how powerful collaboration can be. He said the countries are facing some of the most significant water challenges of their era, issues that don’t recognise national boundaries.
“By working with our Mekong partners, we are not only enhancing water resource management but also fostering regional stability and economic prosperity,” he said.
The MRC has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deepen collaboration on water resource management, climate resilience and sustainable development across the Mekong region.
The new partnership brings together the MRC’s basin-wide expertise and Singapore’s advanced capabilities in technology, innovation and water management. This is said to be opening a new chapter of practical cooperation at a time when the Mekong region is facing growing pressures from climate change, extreme weather variability and increasing demand for water resources.
“While Singapore is not a riparian state, it has an interest in developments in the region. From shifting weather patterns, changes in crop yields, to environmental challenges and transnational crime, developments in the Mekong River Basin can easily affect other parts of the region and the world,” said HE Ong Siew Gay, Singapore Ambassador to Lao PDR.
“As the world goes through disruptive change, and fragmentation and geopolitical contestation accelerates, regional countries and external partners will have no choice but to double down on greater international cooperation,” he added. “Singapore hopes to be able to make a modest but meaningful contribution.”
The agreement provides a flexible framework for cooperation over an initial period of five years, allowing both sides to jointly develop and implement activities aligned with the priorities of the current MRC Strategic Plan 2026–2030, particularly in strengthening resilience to climate risks including floods and droughts. One key focus of the MoU is the use of satellite and geospatial technologies to improve how the region tracks climate patterns and water conditions, supporting early warnings and better preparedness for extreme weather events.
“The challenges that we face today in the Mekong River are transboundary which require multi-faceted approaches and solutions to sustainable water resources management for the Mekong River Basin,” said Busadee Santipitaks, CEO of the MRC Secretariat. She emphasised that: “This partnership reflects a broader and shared understanding that the future of the Mekong is not shaped by riparian countries alone. Singapore’s experience and technical strengths will immensely bring fresh perspectives that can help us tackle shared challenges and build more resilient water systems in the future.”
Race is on
Iran is in one of the most arid regions of the world, and in 2025 its rainfall was 40% below the long-term average, causing reservoir capacity to fall to around 12%. However, collaborative research between Iranian and US researchers has tried to provide solutions to address the crisis.
John P. Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences in the School of Engineering at the University of S. Thomas in Minnesota, US, has carried out studies with Farzin Salmasi, a water engineering professor at the University of Tabriz in Iran. Their research, published in the Iranian Journal of Science and Technology, demonstrates how AI can help Iran’s engineers improve and future-proof water infrastructure designs.
The joint research has focused on optimising the spillway design of storage dams. Computer models are training AI to analyse thousands of different designs and help figure out the best. Using AI, Salmasi says, will also help engineers design more economical water structures.
“In our joint research work, we optimised the stepped spillway of a storage dam with the aim of maximising energy dissipation, which I think will greatly contribute to the economisation of the designs,” he said.
Abraham is confident that the encouraging data analysis results yielded from their research will have positive, long-term effects in Iran for years to come.
“Right now, the information that we are coming up with is being fed to the designers of the next generation of water structures,” he said. “They are able to make that next generation better, stronger, cheaper and able to sustain themselves and last indefinitely into the future.”
Abraham said with climate change adversely affecting precipitation patterns worldwide, the race is on to improve the global water crisis. He is hopeful using these new AI techniques will speed up the optimisation process to help improve water management faster than the climate is changing.
“I think we are going to win this race because we have jet power called AI,” he added.
