Clean Energy Ambitions Power Development

Under the vast, unblinking eye of the sun, a dark blue sea ripples against fleecy clouds—not water, but thousands upon thousands of photovoltaic panels. Stretching to the horizon in precise, shimmering rows, the panels catch the light like liquid sapphire, creating a spectacle from their glassy surfaces dancing with reflections and casting shifting patterns that mimic waves upon a silent sun-drenched shore.

Among this serene blue expanse, towering wind turbines, like modern-day titans, stand as sentinels of the wind. Piercing the sky, they anchor their colossal white trunks deep in the earth. Above, blades as long as 100 meters carve slow, deliberate arcs through the air.

This is a breathtaking peek at the solar and wind farms in Dabancheng District of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

“Light and wind are now transformed into clean energy, illuminating households and fueling industrial production and the fulfillment of China’s carbon peaking and neutrality goals,” said Song Li, an official with the Dabancheng District Government. China aims to have carbon emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

Mushrooming wind, solar farms

Apart from Dabancheng, Xinjiang is home to eight other wind zones, including Alashankou City in Bortala Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture and Shisanjianfang in Hami Prefecture, where winds are steady and can blow at gale force for half a year or longer.

These zones have the potential for a total installed wind power capacity of 80 gigawatts (gw), equivalent to that of four and a half Three Gorges power plants. The Three Gorges power plant on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the longest waterway in China, is the world’s largest hydropower project.

Xinjiang also boasts five zones abounding in solar energy resources, including Hami and Turpan. The exploitable solar power potential in the region is the largest nationwide.

Given such a bounty of resources, wind and solar farms have been thriving across Xinjiang. Dabancheng was one of the first places in China to make a foray into the wind and solar power industry. In 1989, Chinese and Danish engineers brought the first wind farm in the district into operation. Today, Dabancheng has 61 wind farms and six electricity collection stations, according to Song.

“Dabancheng’s installed capacity of wind and solar power has reached 4.97 gw. Wind farms in the district generated around 9.6 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity in 2023,” Song said.

In Wuqia County, Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture, 38 wind turbines with a combined installed capacity of 200 megawatts (mw) went into operation in August 2024.

The first wind power project in south Xinjiang, and the one at the highest altitude, the project on the Pamirs Plateau is expected to generate 540 million kwh of electricity each year, an amount that can meet the annual power needs of 300,000 local households, while reducing the consumption of 160,000 tons of standard coal equivalent, said Zhang Shigang, head of the China Energy Investment Corp. subsidiary that operates the project.

In north Xinjiang, wind turbines and solar panels have been erected. Official statistics show that Altay Prefecture currently has 27 clean energy projects under construction, with a combined installed capacity of 10.87 gw. Of the total, 9.82 gw come from wind farms, and the remainder from solar farms.

Chinese solution

Clean as they are, wind and solar energy has never been easy to harness. “A major challenge is that wind and solar power are not stable sources of energy due to climatic conditions,” said Sun Yijiang, head of a wind farm in Dabancheng operated by Goldwind, a global clean energy solution provider.

Solar panels rely on sunlight for power generation, and output drops drastically at night and on cloudy or rainy days, he explained, adding that unstable wind speeds undermine the efficiency of wind turbines.

Innovation in power storage is Xinjiang’s solution to this. In late May 2024, China Resources Power Holdings Co. Ltd., in partnership with tech giant Huawei’s smart energy division, conducted the world’s first performance tests at a 100-mw-hour smart string grid-forming energy storage system plant in Xianshuiquan, Hami. Its success marked a major breakthrough in clean energy storage.

In Jimusaer (Jimsar) County, Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, long-duration solar power storage in real-world applications has become a reality. In July, an all-vanadium redox flow battery project for solar power storage was completed. The system is capable of storing 1 million kwh of electricity for as long as five hours. The all-vanadium redox flow battery is a novel electrochemical apparatus that can transfer and store electricity effectively.

Also, in July, the construction of a 4,197-km extra-high voltage power transmission loop around the Tarim Basin, home to China’s largest desert, was completed. The largest of its kind in China, it is Xinjiang’s sixth 750-kv power transmission systems.

“These transmission systems make it a reality that power generated from solar and wind farms can be put into the power grid for local consumption by both households and businesses, with any surplus transferred out of Xinjiang,” said Zhou Jianbang, head of power scheduling of the Urumqi subsidiary of State Grid Corp. of China.

Green electricity

By the end of 2024, Xinjiang’s installed capacity of new energy had reached 100 gw, 2.8 times that in 2021, according to official statistics.

This means Xinjiang is capable of producing 230 billion kwh of green electricity annually, said Wang Weiqing, a professor of energy at Xinjiang University. To qualify as green electricity, nearly no pollution can be produced in the power generation process.

With the green electricity, 70 million tons of standard coal equivalent can be saved, and more than 190 million tons of carbon emissions avoided each year, he added.

For businesses, green electricity is a cheaper and safer choice. “About 300-400 yuan ($44-57) can be saved in producing one ton of products,” said Xu Jude, General Manager of a chemical products company in Alaer (Aral) City.

It also helps businesses fulfill their carbon neutrality commitments. In the zero-carbon digital industrial park of Goldwind in Dabancheng, 95 percent of the electricity used for manufacturing wind turbine components is green.

With Goldwind as a representative, Xinjiang is spearheading the formation of a complete industrial chain built around the large-scale development of wind and solar energy. Typical examples include the manufacturing of wind turbines and blades, motors, gears and other auxiliaries, as well as photovoltaic materials. More than 70 percent of wind farm equipment installed in Xinjiang is locally sourced.

“Wind and solar energy are shoring up a new pillar industrial cluster in Xinjiang,” Song said.