Climate change: China sets stage for more of its transport to run on solar energy

Last week, Shanghai’s municipal transport commission issued an implementation plan to promote the deployment of solar energy in the city’s transport sector, becoming the country’s first local government to do so.

The city aims to install more solar panels in its underground railway network, airports, train stations, ports, buses, bridges and tunnels, highways and car parks. Its aim is that by 2025, this newly added capacity should reach 120 to 180 megawatts (MW). At least 50 per cent of newly built transport facilities should be covered with rooftop solar panels, while all new highway sound barriers should also be equipped with this equipment, according to the plan.

The Shanghai government also aims to upgrade existing facilities and vehicles to ensure they can consume solar energy generated locally and send the excess generated to the power grid.

Shanghai is not the only city eyeing solar installations in its transport sector. Following the launch of a transport system development plan by the State Council last January, which encouraged the deployment of photovoltaic power generation facilities along China’s transport infrastructure, several local governments including those in Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangxi provinces have all mentioned solar energy deployment in transport systems in recent policies.

The transport sector accounted for 9 per cent of China’s total energy consumption and 11 per cent of its total greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The sector is also one of the fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions in China, with a growth rate of more than 5 per cent a year over the past decade, according to a report last year by the Transport Planning and Research Institute, which comes under China’s ministry of transport.