Inside Tajikistan’s Energy-Aluminum Nexus, 10 June 2014

The Soviet Union built Nurek, the tallest hydropower dam in the world, and Talco, the largest factory in what is now Tajikistan, as part of a single system in the 1970s. Aluminum smelting requires vast amounts of power. The dam and the plant were to help industrialize the distant, subsidy-dependent Soviet republic.

Fast forward 40 years and Nurek – which generates 75 percent of Tajikistan’s electrical output – is not enough. The Talco factory uses so much power (39 percent of Tajikistan’s output, according to a 2012 World Bank study; 13-15 percent in these lean years, according to the company), that Tajikistan suffers incapacitating shortages, especially in autumn and winter when Nurek's reservoir is low...