China has started building a 3GW solar photovoltaic complex in a desert in the northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
According to a CGTN report, the project is being developed in the Tengger Desert in Zhongwei City of Ningxia over an area of around 43,000km2. High altitude and long sunlight hours make Ningxia suitable for solar energy development, the publication added.
Around 111 new energy projects were implemented in Zhongwei city in the recent years with a combined installed capacity touching 8.27 GW.
The latest photovoltaic project will entail an investment of about CNY15.25 ($2.2bn).
Once complete, the project will generate 5.78 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually. This will in turn help in offsetting carbon dioxide emissions by about 4.66 million tonnes per year.
The photovoltaic project is also expected to support 1,500 jobs and deliver an annual revenue of CNY1.5bn.
The announcement of the latest project comes as China aims to carbon neutrality by 2060.
At the UN Climate Change Summit in 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping committed to increase the country’s installed capacity of wind and solar power to more than 1,200 GW by the end of this decade.
This will include developing 450GW of solar and wind power generation capacity on the Gobi and other desert regions.
According to National Energy Administration data, China had installed 306 GW of solar power capacity and 328 GW of wind capacity by the end of last year.
Earlier this month, the State Grid Corporation of China announced a more than CNY150bn ($22bn) investment plan for the second half of this year to implement a new batch of ultra-high voltage (UHV) power transmission projects across the country.
