China building 'Solar Great Wall' set to power Beijing and beyond
China have announced their latest step into the future in the form of a 'Solar Great Wall', which looks to produce enough energy to power a city as big as Beijing.
With climate change on everyone's minds the push towards renewable energy sources is vital, as not only are they far better for the planet but, as the name suggests, they'll never run out.
Solar power is one of the most popular forms, and has been encouraged by many to be installed on their own homes in order to cut down energy bills (even in some cases providing a revenue stream for over production), but this latest project by the Chinese government takes things a step further.
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Dubbed the 'solar great wall', the project began in 2017 and finds itself within the sandy and remote Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia.
It's aim is to produce a 400 kilometer long and 5 kilometer wide stretch of solar panels which could generate a maximum of around 100 gigawatts of power and hopefully power a city as large and densely populated as Beijing, the country's capital.
Reports show that the city consumed around 135.780 kWh bn in 2023, which is a 6% increase from the previous year but a staggering 49% increase from the numbers a decade ago.
Despite this, Beijing's coal consumption dropped from 11.65 million tons in 2015 to 1.35 million tons in 2020, making a clear pathway for the promised push to zero coal usage by 2035.
The solar great wall, then, could be a key part in accelerating this push for greener energy, as current reports expect the project to be finished by 2030 - a mere half-decade away now.
Only around 5.4 gigawatts have been installed so far, but the project remains on track for completion and could be a significant game changer when combatting climate change in the nation.
This is far from China's first foray into the world of solar power though, as the nation currently produces around 386,875 megawatts of power from solar farms, which settles at roughly 51% of the global total according to NASA.
China is also significantly ahead of other leading global nations when it comes to solar production year-on-year too, increasing its growth by an average of 39,994 megawatts per year compared to just 8,137 megawatts that the US averaged in the same 2017-2023 time period.
You'd hope that this project upon completion would be a major point of inspiration for the rest of the world, as if something like this is enough to solely power the eighth largest city in the entire world then it's definitely worth considering. Not ever nation has a massive remote desert at hand to build in though.