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Solar farm in the Tengger Desert, China. (Photo: iStock)
China’s effort to build large solar power “bases” in and around the desert is a major part of its current renewable plan.
What is less known is that the initiative – which has expanded rapidly in the country’s arid north and northwest – is also a part of China’s campaign to combat desertification, an issue increasingly exacerbated by climate change.
For more than four decades, Beijing has been trying to prevent sand from degrading its land and forming dust storms with an afforestation programme called the “Three-North Shelterbelt” (三北防護林).
Over the past two years, the programme – described as China’s “war on sand” by the media – has been boosted by the development of large-scale solar bases in far-flung regions, such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
Installing solar panels in the desert can not only generate power, but also help prevent sand dunes from moving, according to Dr He Jijiang, executive deputy director of the Research Center for Energy Transition and Social Development at Tsinghua University, Beijing.
Energy companies’ investments also provide financial support to many regions’ sand-control campaigns – an apparent obstacle in the past – Dr He tells Carbon Brief at a side event in the China pavilion at the ongoing 16th session of the conference of parties (COP16) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
