State-owned power company China Three Gorges Renewables Group is set to construct an 8 GW solar farm as part of a nearly $11 billion integrated energy project, highlighting the rapid expansion of renewable energy amid surging global electricity demand.
To put the scale of this project into perspective, the three largest solar farms in the world by capacity are China’s Ningxia Tenggeli and Golmud Wutumeiren solar farms, each with a capacity of 3 MW, and a 3.5-GW solar farm outside Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. The new solar farm in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, will more than double these capacities.
In addition to the massive solar farm, the $10.99 billion project will also include 4 GW of wind, 5 GWh of energy storage capacity, 200 MW of solar thermal, and 4 GW of coal-fired power. This integrated approach aims to meet the growing electricity demands in northern China, with power dispatched to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster via an ultra-high voltage power transmission line.
The project will break ground in September and is expected to come online by June 2027. China Three Gorges Renewables will hold a 56% stake in the project, with Inner Mongolia Energy Group controlling the remaining 44%.
This development comes as global electricity demand is forecast to grow by around 4% in 2024, up from 2.5% in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) newly released “Electricity Mid-Year Update” report. This would represent the highest annual growth rate since 2007, except for rebounds after the global financial crisis and the pandemic.
Renewables are set to expand rapidly this year and next, with their share of global electricity supply forecast to rise from 30% in 2023 to 35% in 2025. Solar alone is expected to meet roughly half of the growth in global electricity demand in 2024 and 2025, with solar and wind combined meeting as much as 75% of the growth.
Despite the rapid increase in renewables, global power generation from coal is unlikely to drop this year due to demand growth, especially in China and India, according to the IEA report. As a result, CO2 emissions from the global power sector are plateauing, with a slight increase in 2024 followed by a decline in 2025.
For more details, visit Electrek.