In a remote northern Chinese plain, which was once the largest solar farm in the world, thousands of columns of gleaming sections blanket vast areas of scrubby dust at sunset.
The solar park, which is located close to the forbidding Tengger desert, produces 1.5 gigawatts ( GW ) of power, but it has since been overtaken, and the largest is now located further west, with capacity that is more than double that of the solar park.
China, the country’s biggest emission of greenhouse gases, is building nearly twice as many wind and solar power as every other land combined.
Its wind and solar power was almost six years before President Xi Jinping’s plan, which it oversaw next week.
The enormous solar panels in the Ningxia area are a bible to the state-led industrial policy that has fueled that rapid progress.
Large trucks sound down a highway strewn across by photovoltaic panel and horizon-extending wind turbines north of the provincial capital, Yinchuan.
Ningxia, like much of China’s west, is sparsely populated and sun-soaked, pockmarked with little fields, vines and hulking energy facilities.
Because of its location, solar energy is ideally suited for use in China’s eastern and southern regions, where energy demand is highest.
” China’s solar power is developing at an unprecedented pace and scale”, said analyst Wu Di from Peking University’s Institute of Energy.
According to the National Energy Administration, the nation increased its installed solar capacity by more than 55 % next year.
According to Wu, China now accounts for more than 40 % of the world’s total built power.
” NEED FOR COAL WANING”
Piece of its commitments under the Paris climate agreement, which seeks to reduce global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, Beijing aims to bring pollutants of planet-heating carbon monoxide to a maximum by 2030 and to net zero by 2060.
According to David Fishman, a senior manager at the Lantau Group with a focus on China’s power sector,” carbon ca n’t peak” unless incremental consumption demand is completely offset by incremental growth in clean energy.
According to the statement, “ensuring that all energy demand growth is met by fresh sources is essential.”
According to a report released this month by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, the state just authorized about 9 GW of new coal energy in the first quarter of 2024, a year-on-year decline of 83 percent.
The need for new fuel is waning, according to the Finland-based separate research group, “because all new alternative energy installations are now able to meet all incremental energy demand in China.”
But it also warned that design continued on existing coal jobs, probably slowing Beijing’s power change.