China announces the biggest solar and wind farm ever

Energy & Emissions

Oct 18

At a whopping 400 GW, it would produce more renewable energy than the United States

Summary - Wow. At the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, President Xi announced a 400 gigawatts solar and wind project. That is more than the entire wind and solar capacity installed in the United States and almost 70% of the total capacity installed in Europe. Apparently construction on the first phase, comprising 100 gigawatts of wind and solar, has started “smoothly”. Details on the project are absent, no location or planning was provided.

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The biggest renewable project in human history

Casually announced like a boss

At the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the first steps had been taken towards the construction of a huge wind and solar park. Construction on the first phase, comprising 100 gigawatts of wind and solar in the desert is apparently already underway. The full 400 GW project would already be half finished by 2025. Allegedly.

The project is still shrouded in mystery.

“We are not there yet, but we are approaching the laying of the foundation stone”, President Xi Jinping said via video link. “China will continue to promote the adjustment of industrial structure and energy structure, vigorously develop renewable energy, and accelerate the planning and construction of large-scale wind and solar projects in desert areas.”

Is it really that big?

Yes. It’s huge

The size and scale of the project are nigh unfathomable. We will try and wrap our minds around it nonetheless.

This single (!) project would produce slightly less than twice the amount of renewable power produced in the US, which is around 244 GW. It actually comes close to the total installed renewable capacity of Europe, which is around 609 GW.

That’s all great, you might think. But the energy demands of countries do not make it more comprehensible. How does the project compare with other renewables in Western Europe for example? Let’s have a look at wind and solar to get an idea of the scale.

An average-sized wind project on the North Sea gives you about 350 MW of energy. To equal the Chinese project, one would need more than a thousand wind farms on the North Sea to get the same amount of energy. And how large would the surface area be if you have to produce 400 gigawatts using solar energy? Depending on your assumptions you would end up with a surface area roughly twice the size of Flevoland, a province that was build by the Dutch after the second world war.

One vital piece of information to determine power output is missing from the equation however: where will it be build?

When, where and how?

We don't really know

Details about the project are scarce, practically non-existent. The exact location of the park is unknown, nor is the timetable for its construction or how spread out the installations will be. A likely location is desert area in western China, where existing and planned power lines link renewables projects to the main demand centers in the east.

“China will continue to promote industrial structure and energy structure adaptation, vigorously develop renewable energy, and accelerate the planning and construction of large-scale wind and solar energy projects in desert regions,” the Chinese president said.

Despite international pressure, China has still not disclosed the details of the plans. In his speech, Xi Jinping merely reiterated the future announcement of the concrete measures that would be taken to that end. He has not said when all this will be announced. All we can do at this moment is guess and wait for more information.

Breakthrough or smokescreen?

That depends on you

While this announcement is truly spectacular news for fans of renewables, it will not convince the skeptics. China is still the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, despite their ambitious plans.

Xi reiterated that China will release plans to peak emissions by 2030 in key areas and sectors, aided by a series of supporting measures, but didn’t provide any further details on timing. Their climate goals still state China aims for carbon neutrality by 2060, although some say that the pursuit of carbon neutrality by 2060 is coming too late. According to IPCC experts, it is imperative that the world become carbon neutral by 2050 in order to keep climate change below the most alarming thresholds.

In this case, the saying “better late than never” does not hold up.