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Energy
ChinaScience

Why has China’s poorest province just built world’s largest wind farm?

  • Gansu had to fight to complete the farm after past oversupply issues, with remoteness and desert landscape among the challenges
  • Local official says the plant ‘turned the lifeless Gobi Desert into an unlimited chamber of treasure’, but much depends on demand for its electricity

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The wind farm in Jiuquan was completed last month after being delayed for four years by the central government. Photo: Weibo
Stephen Chenin Beijing
A huge wind farm in China’s northwest is the latest in the country’s succession of energy mega-projects, but the rocky road of its construction has already raised questions over its future.

Completed last month in the Gobi Desert in the landlocked province of Gansu, which has the country’s lowest GDP per capita, the 100 billion yuan (US$15 billion) project was delayed for four years by the central government over high investment risks after previous plants there hit trouble.

The 10 gigawatt (GW) capacity of the farm, in Jiuquan, far exceeds that of the second-largest wind power plant, India’s 1.6GW Jaisalmer park, and is so far about half that of the country’s Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower plant. It could generate billions of yuan and create jobs in a province where the annual income is only about half the national average.

But putting the world’s largest wind farm in a distant desert location creates challenges regarding its efficiency and the demand for its electricity.

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According to the provincial government’s latest plans, the wind farm’s capacity will double to 20GW by 2025. It is projected that it will help to cut Gansu’s fossil fuel use in electricity production to 35 per cent, making it one of the greenest provinces in China.

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