The Hidden Hurdles Behind Building Southeast Asia's $100 Billion Supergrid

The hardest part of building a wind farm along the misty ridges of southern Laos wasn’t hauling 25-ton blades up mountain roads or laying 71 kilometers (44 miles) of cables in thick vegetation. It wasn’t even removing unexploded bombs left over from the Vietnam War.

Instead, it was bureaucracy that kept engineering veteran Nat Hutanuwatr up at night — the delicate diplomacy and seemingly endless paperwork required for neighboring Southeast Asian nations to share clean electricity. It was, he says, like “climbing a series of Everests.”