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Can Wind and Solar Really Replace Hydropower in Mongolia?

  • pwfong
  • Apr 28, 2023
  • 1 min read

Updated: May 3, 2023

Mongolia has secured funding for its first large-scale wind and solar project. (Read more here.) The 41-megawatt system has an estimated price tag of $66.2 million.

For the sake of argument, imagine ten such projects, producing 410 megawatts of electricity at a cost of approximately $662 million, without harm to a single one of Mongolia's rivers.

Now consider the proposed Egiin Gol hydropower dam, designed to generate 315 megawatts at an estimated cost of $828 million, with unknown consequences both upstream and down . . .

from November 8, 2018

 
 
 

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“What a fine book! There are few more beautiful places on earth than Lake Baikal  and its vast surroundings; this account of a noble adventure will leave you with deep  impressions of the place and its people, its past and its possible futures. Surely a fifth of the earth's fresh water deserves your attention!”

—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and founder of  Third Act

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“Rowing to Baikal is an instant classic in the disturbing genre created by people in love with massive ecosystems in the process of being destroyed. Peter Fong’s portrait of the rivers that carry a fifth of Earth’s freshwater to Lake Baikal is both panoramic and intensely personal, stretching from the political nightmares that threaten Baikal to love for the tiny pikas (‘Little Kings,’ Peter calls them) that still perch on boulders in the headwaters surveying the beauty and heartache far below. Eighty percent of the world’s rivers are now dammed at stupendous cost to ecological and cultural health. That more dams within a year may decimate this planetary treasure stands in maddening contrast to Peter's courageous account of his voyage. I love this book, and pray health to its waters.”

—David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and Sun House

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“Rowing to Baikal is an engrossing tale told by the intrepid Peter Fong, whose vivid prose carries readers to the farthest ends of the earth, and expands our sense of discovery, responsibility, and interconnectedness—our ken, as it were—as all good stories should.”

—Chris Dombrowski, author of The River You Touch

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“In Rowing to Baikal, Peter Fong has written a graceful and illuminating account of the Baikal Headwaters Expedition. Fong leads a captivating cast of characters in a search for solutions to the entangled dilemmas of river conservation and energy independence for Mongolia, weaving together ecological observations and a passionate voice for the river’s future.”

—Nancy Langston, author of Climate Ghosts and Sustaining Lake Superior

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“Rowing to Baikal is a magical story of a scientific expedition through the Selenge River watershed. Peter Fong has picked up the pen from the likes of Peter Matthiessen and Carl Safina. This treasure is a travel narrative, conservation account, and an environmental justice treatise all wrapped into a perfectly paced adventure with kayaks, shamans, vodka, and always, swimming just ahead, the elusive Baikal omul and the Mongolian taimen: two rare fish with climate change and geopolitics nipping at their tails.”

—Richard J. King, author of Ahab’s Rolling Sea and The Devil’s Cormorant

 

“Both a rollicking yarn and a moving portrait of a complex, remote place, Rowing to Baikal goes up mountains and down the Selenge River to show us the politics, significance, and beauty of the Mongolian-Russian borderlands. Full of camels, rare fish, and unforgettable people, Fong makes you care for this river and the cultures it nurtures.”

—Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast

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Order your copy now!

Fifty percent of the royalties from your purchase will be donated to

the Wild Salmon Center's International Taimen Initiative.

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