China plans huge wind and solar power rollout in Gobi desert
Publication year
Resource type
UNCCD Library
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news article
Published on 09/03/2022, 4:13pm
The goal is to install 450GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, more than twice the US’ installed wind and solar generating fleet.
By Joe Lo and Isabelle Gerretsen
China plans to build 450 gigawatts of wind and solar power capacity in the Gobi desert by 2030, government planner He Lifeng said on Saturday.
That’s more than twice the total amount of solar and wind power installed in the USA.
Client Earth’s China representative Dimtri De Boer said: “450GW is really huge. That would be the lion’s share of new solar and wind capacity installation until 2030.”
The scaling up of renewable deployment should be “a major economic boost for China’s underdeveloped western regions,” he said.
Greenpeace East Asia’s Li Shuo said: “This is the positive side of the China climate story. People should get used to big numbers… China’s challenge is how to stop the coal side of the story, which is growing in equally big numbers.”The Gobi desert straddles China’s northern border with Mongolia. The land is cheap and there is lots of wind and sunshine.The province of Inner Mongolia, which includes most of China’s Gobi desert, is the biggest producer of coal in China and has pursued a coal-led recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
China has brought the costs of manufacturing solar panels down and is able to use these cheap domestic panels in projects like this.
“It only makes sense to deploy domestically made renewable energy equipments in big scale as a way to contribute to climate action as well as economic growth,” Li said. READ FURTHER FROM THE SOURCE ABOVE
The goal is to install 450GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, more than twice the US’ installed wind and solar generating fleet.
By Joe Lo and Isabelle Gerretsen
China plans to build 450 gigawatts of wind and solar power capacity in the Gobi desert by 2030, government planner He Lifeng said on Saturday.
That’s more than twice the total amount of solar and wind power installed in the USA.
Client Earth’s China representative Dimtri De Boer said: “450GW is really huge. That would be the lion’s share of new solar and wind capacity installation until 2030.”
The scaling up of renewable deployment should be “a major economic boost for China’s underdeveloped western regions,” he said.
Greenpeace East Asia’s Li Shuo said: “This is the positive side of the China climate story. People should get used to big numbers… China’s challenge is how to stop the coal side of the story, which is growing in equally big numbers.”The Gobi desert straddles China’s northern border with Mongolia. The land is cheap and there is lots of wind and sunshine.The province of Inner Mongolia, which includes most of China’s Gobi desert, is the biggest producer of coal in China and has pursued a coal-led recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
China has brought the costs of manufacturing solar panels down and is able to use these cheap domestic panels in projects like this.
“It only makes sense to deploy domestically made renewable energy equipments in big scale as a way to contribute to climate action as well as economic growth,” Li said. READ FURTHER FROM THE SOURCE ABOVE
Keywords
renewable energy
energy resources
China
facts and figures