Exploring New Paths for Governance through New Industries for Photovoltaic Power Stations | Projects | Paths

In April this year, the first project registered and started in the national "Sage Desert" base - the 1 million kilowatt photovoltaic project of Ningxia Tengger Desert 3GW New Energy Base Phase I was successfully connected to the grid for power generation. After the completion of this project, the annual power generation can reach 4.35 billion kilowatt hours. After being bundled with other parts of Ningxia's electricity, it will be transmitted to Hunan through the Ningxiang ± 800 kV ultra-high voltage direct current transmission project, which started construction in June this year, with an annual transmission capacity of 36 billion kilowatt hours to 40 billion kilowatt hours. This move not only strongly supports the high-quality development of energy demand in Hunan and even the Yangtze River Economic Belt, bringing considerable economic benefits to Ningxia, but also explores new paths for ecological governance.

The photovoltaic power station is located in Zhongwei City on the southeast edge of Tengger Desert, and construction will start in September 2022. As the mobile dunes in Tengger Desert often move to the southeast, Zhongwei City has a lot of sandstorms. In history, sand dunes have advanced to the urban area of Zhongwei City. Therefore, the project simultaneously uses 26000 mu of grass grid laying and grass seed sowing to prevent wind and sand, and adopts the "forest light complementary" and "agricultural light complementary" technologies, adopting the "forest herbal combination" model. Not only does the green electricity produced give new value to electricity - environmental value, but the photovoltaic power station also greatly restores and increases vegetation, opening up a new win-win path of "green energy development+desert governance", exploring new ways of desert ecological governance, which is of great significance.

Firstly, for desert photovoltaic power stations, sand prevention and control are necessary, and related investments such as funding are positive. This is because grass grids have the function of sand fixation. If the photovoltaic power station does not install grass grids, strong wind and sand will cause the spiral piles of the photovoltaic panel support to be exposed vertically, leading to the collapse of the support. Therefore, compared with traditional state-owned forest farms and individual desertification control, the driving force and management level of photovoltaic desertification control are different. Firstly, photovoltaic enterprises must prevent and control desertification to ensure the safety of power station facilities. Secondly, photovoltaic panels need to be cleaned with water every year. In addition, photovoltaic panels reduce the evaporation of ground water, which is conducive to the growth of desert plants. Each power station has a dedicated person to manage it, solving the long-standing problem of "having human species but lacking human management" in the western desert forest belt.

Secondly, the investment in grass planting, afforestation, and sand control in photovoltaic power stations only accounts for a very small part of the economic benefits of enterprise power generation, with a light burden on sand control and high enthusiasm for enterprise sand control. This creates a huge contrast with the traditional approach of investing heavily in desertification control and afforestation, with low returns. For a long time, the enthusiasm for ecological construction in the western region of China has not been high enough, mainly due to the decoupling of ecological construction and protection from economic benefits, and the failure to utilize the ecological environment as a resource. However, photovoltaic power stations have successfully achieved a combination of ecological construction, protection, and economic benefits, greatly ensuring the efficiency and sustainability of sand prevention and control.

In fact, in recent years, the vast majority of photovoltaic power stations in the northwest have been actively carrying out ecological governance, planting trees and grass inside and outside the photovoltaic power stations, and actively greening. Last September, due to the high growth of grass inside the photovoltaic power station, the State Power Investment Corporation's Wuling Power Yuding Photovoltaic Power Station in Zhongwei City invited herdsmen to come into the station to graze sheep and grass. After this image spread online, it attracted social attention and became a typical case of using the photovoltaic industry to promote desert ecological governance in the western region. Not only that, some photovoltaic power stations also achieve "on board power generation, inter board planting, under board restoration, and park tourism", forming a new ecological governance model that combines light, forest, grass, medicine, and tourism.

China lacks forests and greenery, and its ecology is fragile. It is severely affected by desertification and desertification, with eight major deserts and four major sandy areas distributed. The area of desertified land in the country accounts for more than a quarter of the national land area. The primary task is to "adapt to local conditions and scientific greening", afforestation should be carried out in areas where afforestation is necessary, and the original appearance should be maintained in areas where afforestation is not necessary. The development and utilization of "wind and solar" electricity in the Sago Desert should be based on the premise of not damaging the normal ecological functions of the original desert ecosystem. Therefore, guided by the new development concept, we should actively explore the development of new industries such as new energy and cloud computing, continuously open up new paths for ecological governance, and enable regions such as deserts, Gobi, and deserts that pose challenges to human survival to bear new hope for development.