China’s environment ministry has refused approval for a hydropower dam on an ecologically vulnerable river already damaged by construction, a rare setback for the country’s extensive dam-building program. While the 1,000-megawatt Xiaonanhai project appears scrapped, experts said China’s overall plan for dams was on course given pressure to cut smog from coal-fired power plants. Hydropower capacity is due to rise another 60 gigawatts (GW) in five years as new projects get approved. The Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a document sent to the Three Gorges Project Corporation and seen by Reuters that the firm could not plan or build the project on the Jinsha river, the upstream section of the Yangtze, in the southwest. “In the last 10 years, two investigations have been carried out into construction in precious and unique national protection zones for fish in the lower reaches of the Jinsha river, and […]