China is cementing its dominance in global hydropower, highlighted by the Yarlung Tsangpo hydropower project – expected to be the world’s largest – and a massive pipeline of “pumped storage” facilities serving as Beijing’s strategic push to transform its fossil-fuel-reliant electricity grid into a stable, renewables-based network.

In its annual outlook report, the International Hydropower Association (IHA) said that with an estimated annual output capability of 300,000 gigawatt-hours, the Yarlung Tsangpo project could generate roughly three times as much electricity as the Three Gorges Dam.

Brandon Marler, the association’s senior energy policy officer, said the Yarlung Tsangpo project, in Medog, in the southeastern corner of China’s Tibet autonomous region, was on track to have an installed capacity of 60 gigawatts.

However, such megaprojects face immense hurdles, with IHA president Malcolm Turnbull lamenting that Moore’s law – which posits that the number of transistors packed onto a microchip will double every two years or so – “does not apply to digging holes”.

“When you build these big infrastructure projects, even somewhere like China, which is very good at it and has huge teams of engineers and construction workers, these things take a long time,” he said.

Construction of the project, expected to cost 1.2 trillion yuan (US$176.4 billion), began in July last year. The development has sparked geopolitical concerns, however, particularly for downstream nations like India, where the Yarlung Tsangpo is known as the Brahmaputra.

“The water arguments will always happen, and the only way they can be resolved is with dialogue. People have just got to be fair,” said Turnbull, a former Australian prime minister, noting the friction inherent in managing cross-border waterways.