Solar burns brightly in dark corners

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Workers instal solar panels on the roof of an energy cube that was built to provide electricity for residents of Nanjing, Jiangsu province (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Chongqing is one of the cities in China with the least sunshine, so perhaps it’s one of the last places you would expect innovation with solar energy to be going on, and yet that’s exactly what’s happening.

Large spaces on the roofs of local factories are providing green solutions for the sustainable development of the city, an industrial powerhouse in south-western China.

In April Chang’an Auto, one of the country’s big carmakers, began operating the largest rooftop photovoltaic (PV) project in the city, with a total installed capacity of 37 megawatts.

The project, covering 74 acres, makes use of spare roofs and carports to house PV modules in the factory area.

A crane is used to lift solar panels onto the roof of a building at the No 1 Middle School in Shuangfeng county, Hunan province, on 18 August, 2023 (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Over 25 years the project is forecast to generate 667 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, reducing the use of standard coal by 240,000 metric tons and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 670,000 tons, Chang’an Auto says.

In recent years China has gone all out to achieve the goals of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. In September 2020 the country pledged to realise the goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.

As such, the authorities have adopted measures to significantly move China’s installed capacity of wind and solar power towards a low-carbon, secure and efficient energy mix.

In a national action plan the government pledged to accelerate construction of large wind-power and PV bases in deserts. It will also encourage distributed PV power generation in villages and industrial parks, and on the roofs of buildings.

By 2025 half of all new public buildings will have solar power facilities on their roofs, it said.

In January Chongqing Longwen Industrial, a steel company that uses a lot of energy, installed a PV system on its factory roof.

“Our rooftop-distributed PV power generation project has already generated more than 160,000 kWh of electricity in less than three months,” said Chen Hao, the company’s deputy property manager. “That’s expected to save us 600,000 yuan (£65,400) a year.”

During public holidays the power generated by the PV system can be sold to the local power grid to bolster the company’s revenue, he said.

The environmental benefits are more significant. Over 25 years, Longwen’s PV project could lower carbon dioxide emissions by about 16,000 tons and see dust emissions decline by about 4,370 tons. It could also lower the company’s electricity consumption and carbon emissions for more than 35 years.

By the end of last year, China’s annual power generation from wind and solar energy accounted for 13.8 per cent of total electricity consumption, the National Energy Administration says.

Newly installed capacity of clean energy in the country rose in the first four months of the year, with wind and photovoltaic power capacity totaling 62.51 million kilowatts.

By the end of April, China’s total installed capacity of wind power was 380 million kW, while the total installed capacity of photovoltaic power was 440 million kW. The two combined accounted for 30.9 per cent of the country’s installed power generation capacity.