The Great Solar Wall: China doubles down on its ambitious effort to tame deserts

China is intensifying its efforts to combat desertification in the arid north through the expansion of the Great Solar Wall initiative. This ambitious project centres in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and promises to harness solar power to generate clean energy while simultaneously halting desertification and creating habitats for plants and wildlife.

As China accelerates its transition away from fossil fuels and solar power is projected to overtake coal as the largest source of installed power capacity by the end of the year, the initiative has gained significant traction. The National Development and Reform Commission unveiled a plan in 2022 to build large-scale wind and solar projects in arid regions, including Inner Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, with an ambitious target of reaching 455 gigawatts of installed capacity by 2030.

This would equate to the capacity of around 20 of China's largest hydroelectric facility, the Three Gorges, and more than seven times the planned mega-dam project on the Yarlung Tsangpo River. Beijing's Five-Year Conservation Plan for forests and grasslands, released in July 2023, also highlights the importance of integrating desertification control and wind and solar power development by 2030 as part of the Three-North Shelterbelt Programme – commonly known as the Great Green Wall.

Since its inception in 1978, the Three-North programme has made significant strides in restoring degraded land and slowing desertification through measures such as large-scale afforestation, sand-fixing barriers, and targeted desert management. Solar panels have increasingly played a crucial role in desertification control efforts in recent years, with major projects in Inner Mongolia forming what the Chinese state media refers to as the Great Solar Wall.

In the Kubuqi Desert, the seventh-largest in China, a 1GW solar project spanning approximately 2,000 hectares connected to the grid in 2023 is transforming the landscape. Expected to generate 8GW of energy and deliver 4GW each in wind and coal power to nearby Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei province, this project is a testament to China's commitment to combating desertification and promoting sustainable energy development.

Notable Chinese solar facilities, such as the 300MW Junma power station – shaped like a galloping horse made up of over 196,000 solar panels – exemplify the grand vision of the Great Solar Wall initiative, which aims to span more than 400km and feature an average width of 5km.