Table 1.

Dam development portfolios over the planning horizon 2016–2037.

Name	Description	No. of dams		Total capacity (GW)
		L-T-C	Mekong	L-T-C	Mekong
Reference	Build all dams (business as usual)	146	236	28.46	63.63
Stop-Main	Build dams on tributaries only	139	229	20.61	55.79
Stop-Planned	Stop building all planned dams (from 2020 onwards)	119	203	19.24	53.70
Stop-All	Stop building all planned and under construction dams (from 2020 onwards)	111	195	18.21	52.67
2016	Dams commissioned by the end of 2016	53	108	9.29	29.58

Overview of the total number of dams, and corresponding installed capacity, for the business-as-usual plan (Reference) plus three additional dam development portfolios. The last row reports information on dams operational in 2016. Both number of dams and total capacity are reported for all countries falling within the Mekong basin and for Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia only (L-T-C). Data were retrieved from refs. ^4–6,35 and processed to filter dams that have either storage capacity >0.1 Mm³ or installed capacity >1 MW.