The Kubuqi Desert Solar Base in Inner Mongolia spans 1,600 square kilometres of restored desert — an area larger than Hong Kong — and generates 16 gigawatts of electricity.

 

"China built a solar farm the size of a small country — and the desert beneath it came back to life.

The Kubuqi Desert Solar Base in Inner Mongolia spans 1,600 square kilometres of restored desert — an area larger than Hong Kong — and generates 16 gigawatts of electricity. That number alone would make it the largest solar installation in history. But what makes the Kubuqi unlike any energy project ever built is not the electricity it generates. It is what happened to the land underneath the panels.

Before construction, the Kubuqi was one of China's most degraded desert regions — advancing sand dunes swallowing farmland at hundreds of metres per year, a landscape of near-zero biological activity. Engineers mounted the solar panels at elevated heights, creating shade beneath. The shade retained moisture. Within four years, vegetation coverage under the array increased from near zero to over 65%. Sheep now graze between the rows. Crops grow in the shadow of panels generating electricity above them. The desert is retreating.

The project generates enough clean electricity to power over 24 million households annually. It has simultaneously restored 6,000 square kilometres of degraded land across the wider development zone — creating an agricultural belt in what was previously encroaching desert. China did not build a solar farm that happened to restore a landscape. It designed a system where the solar farm and the landscape restoration are the same project — each making the other more viable. The panels face the sun. Underneath them, the earth is coming back to life.

Source: National Energy Administration of China & Chinese Academy of Sciences — Kubuqi Desert Solar Base Report 2024

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