In a desert in northern China, an ocean of blue solar panels covers the ocher sand, which marries the relief of the dunes such as the waves, symbol of the energy transition to the forced march of the Asian giant. “Before, there was nothing here (…) I was completely deserted,” recalls Chang Yongfei, originally from the province of Interior Mongolia, which previously worked in the coal sector, a historical pillar of the economy of the region.
700 kilometers from Beijing, these hundreds of thousands of panels represent the symbol of China’s energy transition, the world’s main transmitter of the world’s greenhouse gases. The Xi Jinping manager held Wednesday to reduce the country’s net broadcasts from 7 to 10% by 2035, in a video speech at a UN Special Summit in New York. Solar facilities in deserts and arid areas are a key link in this strategy: Triple of the total electrical capacity of France must be installed there between 2022 and 2030, according to a planning document.
While Donald Trump wants to redirect the United States to oil and fossil fuels, Beijing wants to become a renewable energy champion. Xi Jinping has promised “multiply by six the capacity of wind and solar energy compared to the level of 2020, trying to take the total of 3,600 gigawatts” in 2035.
The satellite images analyzed by AFP confirm a dazzling deployment in the last ten years of photovoltaic in the great Chinese deserts. In Ordos in the Kubuqi desert, where it was an AFP team, more than 100 km² of sand were covered with solar panels, the area of the city of Paris. But this choice raises many challenges: sand storms can degrade facilities, and too high temperatures reduce cell effectiveness.
Blim in Tourism
The accumulation of sand on the panels also requires a considerable amount of water to clean them, however, in arid areas. To compensate for these difficulties, the panels used in Kubuqi have fans capable of automatically cleaning and using bifacial technology to also capture the light reflected in the sand, according to the official media.
The distance between deserts and consumption centers represents another obstacle to the development of these projects. Kubuqi solar energy plants aim to supply the provinces of Beijing, Tianjin or Hebei, hundreds of kilometers south. There is a real risk of “congestion in the transmission lines,” says David Fishman, principal partner of the consulting company Lantau Group. For this reason, several provinces, including interior Mongolia “restrict the approval of new projects,” he adds.
These projects must also compose with the rise of tourism, which exploded in the Kubuqi desert, stimulated by quadruple shipping videos or dromedar walks. At the wheel of its 4×4, Chang Yongfei, the former coal worker, now has this activity to make a living. His cabins with panoramic views in the middle of the dunes, a few steps from the solar field, are a box on social networks.
“This transition (energetic) was very good for the region,” said this 46 -year -old father, however, he admitted to being “very worried” that the solar field obstructs the entire desert, and with him the tourist mana. “But I trust that the government leave us a small game,” he slips.
Other voices emphasize that the mass development of solar energy has not signed the abandonment of coal, especially in interior Mongolia. China has commissioned the first half of 2025 new coal electricity production capabilities in the first half of 2025, according to a report from the Pure Energy and Air Research Center (CREA) and the Global Energy Monitor (GEM). Around Kubuqi, trucks blackened by the soot, endless trains full of coal and large smoking chimneys testify to the vigor of this industry.
Still coal
While the coal “continues to play a role in the Chinese energy system, it actually constitutes a structural obstacle for the expansion of wind and solar energy,” the NGO Greenpeace wrote in June. The deployment of large solar fields in the deserts finally raises questions about its impact on the weather, says Zhengyao Lu, researcher at the University of Lund.
Depending on its modeling, heat absorption for large dark areas can change atmospheric flows and have “negative side effects, for example, with a reduction in precipitation” in other regions. Instead of covering the largest possible surface in solar panels, it recommends “a more intelligent, localized and organized development, which combines energy production and ecological preservation.”
But the risks of solar energy “remain less compared to the dangers of maintaining greenhouse gas emissions,” he concludes.
Source: BFM TV
