China has embarked upon one of the most ambitious and controversial infrastructure endeavors ever undertaken – an immense hydropower mega-project on the Tibetan Plateau that is garnering global attention due to both its scale and opacity. The Medog Hydropower Station planned on Yarlung Tsangpo River (commonly referred to downstream as Brahmaputra), will become world’s largest hydropower facility yet details about its environmental, social and geopolitical ramifications remain confidential.
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The Medog project was approved and initiated in July 2025 in Medog County of Tibet Autonomous Region. When completed, this facility is projected to boast an installed capacity of 60 megawatts (MW) and produce roughly 300 billion kilowatt-hours annually — roughly three times greater than China’s massive Three Gorges Dam.
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While Beijing’s plan to produce enormous amounts of clean energy — an essential element in their bid for carbon neutrality by 2060 — remains promising, this project has raised serious ecological and political concerns both within China and outside. Critics point out that comprehensive environmental impact assessments have largely been withheld while authorities use “national confidentiality” clauses as justification to restrict access to detailed information about its design, reservoir size, effects on fragile ecosystems in one of the world’s biodiverse regions as well as dam construction timelines and costs.
Environmentalists note the location of this project in one of the planet’s most ecologically and geologically complex zones — where a river plunges nearly 2,000 metres through steep canyon terrain, supporting rare forests, wildlife habitats and crucial migratory corridors. While its biodiversity has so far proven resilient to large-scale construction and water diversion projects, experts caution that large-scale disruption to local communities or their biodiversity cannot easily be reversed.
Foreign Policy The secrecy surrounding this project has led to regional geopolitical anxieties. Downstream countries such as India and Bangladesh that depend heavily on the Brahmaputra for irrigation, drinking water supply and economic activity worry that China’s upstream control could give Beijing leverage over water flows during droughts or extreme weather events with potentially dire results; some Indian political figures have described the dam as a potential “ticking water bomb”, potentially unleashing millions of tons of stored water at once without proper management or weaponisation of sudden releases mismanaged or weaponisation thereof.
Former Indian diplomats have voiced concerns over a perceived lack of transparency regarding China’s transboundary water controls without fully adhering to international water treaties – which many see as undermining trust and collaborative resource management.
Beijing asserts that this project is essential to its renewable energy goals and economic development plans for Tibet, altering narratives toward clean power generation, flood mitigation and regional expansion. Chinese officials assert that research, safety planning and ecological protections have been integrated into design phases and will be disseminated progressively; however much remains unverifiable due to limited independent monitoring or limited media access.
The Medog Hydropower Station highlights a wider conflict between rapid infrastructure development and environmental stewardship during an age of climate urgency. While China’s energy transition seeks to lessen fossil fuel usage, megaprojects like this one raise critical issues around transboundary cooperation, sustainable planning and accountability – which must all be kept in mind for successful management.

As construction continues and geopolitical stakes escalate, the world will closely observe not only how China manages power output from this mega hydro-project but also the environmental, social and diplomatic ramifications associated with their mega hydro project to date.