China is building a Great Wall of Energy that could power an entire city. It could power all of Beijing and usher in an era of clean energy. China is the world leader in solar energy, and the country is using that title to its advantage by trying to build what it calls the “Great Wall of Solar.”
Situated along the southern bank of the Yellow River in northern China, the vast facility is estimated to produce 180 billion kWh of clean energy by 2030, more than Beijing’s annual energy budget.
The project also aims to address environmental issues such as desertification of the Yellow River basin and ecological restoration of the Kubuqi Desert.
From the 7th to the 3rd century BCE, Chinese dynasties built the 13,171-mile-long Great Wall of China. Fast forward two millennia, and the country is now embarking on another “Great Wall,” but this one is less concerned with protecting China from the Mongol hordes and more focused on supplying the country with abundant solar energy.
Currently under construction in the Kubuqi Desert along the southern edge of the Yellow River in northern China (in the larger autonomous region known as Inner Mongolia), the Great Wall of the Sun is set to stretch some 133 kilometers (83 miles) long and 25 kilometers (15 miles) wide. China hopes the wall will generate a staggering 180 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year by 2030. That’s more than enough to meet the entire energy needs of Beijing, which consumes about 135.8 billion kWh of energy per year, according to Ordos Energy, the company behind the project.
However, some of the energy generated will benefit communities in the region, an energy official in Dalad Banner (a smaller division of Inner Mongolia) told state media China Daily. The new transmission line will transport 48 billion kWh of energy from the plant to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region each year, the official said.
“All the projects are invested in by state-owned companies, some of which are centrally managed,” Dalad Banner spokesman Li Kai told China Daily, “so local governments don’t need to make any investment at all. In total, about 50,000 jobs will be created by 2030.”
In addition to generating energy and creating jobs, the project also has a positive side effect in terms of conservation. The Yellow River, known as the “river mouth” of the Chinese nation, is undergoing a process known as desertification, where the river’s ecological basin slowly degrades to a desert-like state. The installation plans to treat 27 million hectares of this region, providing shade and reducing evaporation. The panels themselves also provide windbreaks, which can protect the environment from further soil erosion.
These shaded regions also offer ample opportunity to grow commercial crops. The project plans to plant about 2,400 hectares of crops in an attempt to also cultivate the more deserted regions of the Solar Great Wall. Li says the local government aims to form a “symbiotic relationship” between economic progress and environmental conservation.
These huge green energy installations, whether solar, wind, or a combination of the two, will become increasingly common as the world races to decarbonize. The trend is also accelerating in the U.S., where the Energy Information Administration projects a 75 percent increase from 163 billion kWh in 2023 to 286 billion kWh in 2025.
Solar installations also pose a number of environmental risks, including habitat disturbance and increased bird strikes, as waterfowl mistake solar panels for water. However, scientists and engineers in the U.S. are working on ways to increase pollinator plants around these installations, create vital wildlife corridors, and advocate for building solar installations on areas already disturbed by humans (known as brownfields).
In the future, the US and other energy-hungry countries may similarly build their own “Great Solar Walls,” all of which will hopefully be a boon to both humans and the other living things that share the planet with us.
