Water Rush [-Cambodia plans to build a whopping 5,000 megawatts of hydroelectric power capacity...

William Pentland Forbes (USA) Is your company looking for a cheap source of energy? Consider moving your plant to Vietnam's Mekong Delta, roughly two hours outside of Ho Chi Minh City. It's not a particularly convenient place to access, but it's got something most other parts of the world don't have: a prodigious source of hydro-electricity. The Mekong River, 4,500 miles long and the world's 10th largest in total discharge, is fast becoming a global magnet for water power, a cheap resource sought by industries as divergent as semiconductors and aluminum smelting, for which electricity makes up half the cost of production. Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) is building a $1 billion semiconductor plant there. General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people ) has already built a big turbine plant, and is looking to expand in what... [read full story]