Spotlight |
“build” to “bankable” Central Asia’s hydro potential returned to the front
South and Central Asia: from
burner with the EU, EIB, and EBRD sketching a financing pathway for Kyrgyzstan’s 1,860MW Kambar-Ata-1. An indicative package discussed in October – up to $1.5 billion in EBRD sovereign loans among a wider funding stack – signalled that IFIs are willing to underwrite complex transboundary projects when governance and benefits are credibly shared. Meanwhile, the EU’s “Global Gateway” stitched hydropower deeper into its development diplomacy, with new investments across the region. In Tajikistan, the Sebzor plant was inaugurated under the Global Gateway umbrella, a more modest project by megawatt count, but transformative locally, with reliability gains for more than 430,000 people in underserved areas and spillover benefits for cross- border power links. These are the kinds of projects that don’t trend on social media but change daily life: lights that stay on, clinics that refrigerate vaccines, small enterprises that finally buy machinery etc. India offered a study in contrasts. On paper, the country extended a crucial inter-state transmission charge waiver for storage – including pumped storage – through June 2028, a clear policy nudge to get long-duration capacity built. In practice, the near-term storage buildout skewed toward batteries, and even that slowed sharply in 1H 2025, with analysts flagging only 48–49MWh of new energy storage commissioned in the half and a modest 490 =MWh cumulative base by June. Hydropower’s installed PSH base remained about 5GW, respectable, but far shy of what planners say is required by 2030 to firm 500GW of non-fossil generation. The good news: India’s policy levers are now calibrated to favour storage, and record-setting renewable output in May showed why those levers matter.
The Nordics: wrestling with rivers,
Below: Structure of the proposed Coire Glas project
markets, and money Norway – Europe’s hydropower heart – lived out hydropower’s political complexity in public this year.
Parliament greenlit a law allowing new hydropower on previously protected rivers (over 1MW) in cases of “significant societal benefit” and acceptable environmental impact, pitting flood protection and electrification goals against biodiversity and conservation priorities. Later in the year, MPs looked set to block a proposed tax increase on small hydro, reflecting the delicate equilibrium between extracting more value from resources and keeping investment attractive. Meanwhile, utilities pressed ahead with high-value uprates and refurbishments, and the government rolled out a new household price-stability scheme to buffer consumers from volatility tied to continental market coupling. Behind the politics, the project work continued. Aker Solutions secured a major rehabilitation package at Blåfalli Fjellhaugen, one of the country’s largest new hydro builds in two decades, underscoring the scale of Norway’s modernisation wave. This year, Norway also attracted attention as a power-rich location for energy- intensive computing projects – proof that hydropower’s role in “new electrification” reaches well beyond heating and EVs.
Standards, sustainability, and social
license The sector’s social and environmental ledger was busy. Coire Glas’s Gold rating under the Hydropower Sustainability Standard marked a turning point: it showed a developer can embed best practice before shovels hit ground, not just certify after commissioning. For regulators and financiers, this provides a process blueprint; for communities, it offers a clearer way to judge whether promises on labour, biodiversity, and cultural heritage have teeth. Expect more lenders to require HSS or equivalent frameworks in 2026 financings.
But the year also reminded us that social license is earned, not inherited. In Brazil’s Xingu basin, legal fights over Belo Monte’s flow regime intensified, with Indigenous communities and fishers arguing that reduced natural flows along the Volta Grande are incompatible with both livelihoods and biodiversity.
12 | December 2025 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
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