China races to build world’s largest solar farm to meet emissions targets

Talatan, China – Last month, Chinese government officials showed what they say to be the largest solar farm in the world when they were finished high on a Tibetan plateau. It will cover 610 square kilometers (235 square miles), which is the size of Chicago.

China has installed solar panels much faster than everywhere else in the world, and investment is starting to bear fruit. A study published Thursday revealed that the country’s carbon emissions decreased by 1% in the first six months of 2025 compared to a year earlier, extending a trend that started in March 2024.

The good news is that China’s carbon emissions may have reached a peak before a government target to do so before 2030. But China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas transmitter, will have to drop them much more strongly to play its role in the slowdown in global climate change.

For China to achieve its declared objective of carbon neutrality by 2060, emissions should fall by 3% on average over the next 35 years, said Lauri Myllyvirta, the author of the study based in Finland and main analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

“China must reach this territory by 3% as soon as possible,” he said.

China’s emissions have already dropped during the economic slowdown. What is different this time is that the demand for electricity increases – up 3.7% in the first half of this year – but the increase in energy of solar, wind and nuclear energy has easily exceeded this, according to Myllyvirta, which analyzes the most recent data of a study published on the carbon -based carbon website.

“We are really talking for the first time about a structural decline in China’s emissions,” he said.

China installed 212 gigawatts of solar capacity in the first six months of the year, more than all the American capacity of 178 gigawatts at the end of 2024, the study said. Solar electricity has exceeded hydroelectricity in China and is ready to exceed the wind this year to become the country’s largest source of energy. Some 51 wind energy gigawatts were added from January to June.

Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub of the Washington Institute Society Policy, described the China carbon program set as a turning point in the effort to fight climate change.

“It is a moment of global meaning, offering a rare glow of hope in a differently dark climate landscape,” he wrote in an e-mail response. This also shows that a country can reduce emissions while increasing economically, he said.

But Li warned that China’s high dependence on coal remains a serious threat to climate progress and said the economy should move to less than a high intensity of resources. “There is still a long road to come,” he said.

An apparently endless expanse of solar panels extends to the horizon on the Tibetan tray. The two-story white buildings rise above them at regular intervals. The sheep graze on the brushy vegetation that grows under them.

Solar panels have been installed on about two thirds of the land, the power already arising from finished phases. Once fully completed, the project will have more than 7 million panels and will be able to generate enough electricity for 5 million households.

Like many China’s solar and wind parks, it has been built in the relatively not populated West. A major challenge is to obtain electricity from population centers and eastern China factories.

“The distribution of green energy resources is perfectly aligned by the current industrial distribution of our country,” said Zhang Jinming, vice-governor of Qinghai province, to journalists during a tour organized by the government.

Part of the solution is to build transmission lines crossing the country.

We connect Qinghai to the province of Henan. Two others are planned, including one in the province of Guangdong in the Southeast, almost in the opposite corner of the country.

Making a complete use of power is hampered by the relatively inflexible way that the China’s electrical network is managed, adapted to the regular production of coal -fired power plants rather than more variable and less predictable wind and solar energy, said Myllyvirta.

“This is a problem that political decision-makers have recognized and try to manage, but this requires major changes in the operation of coal power plants and major changes in the operation of the transmission network,” he said. “So it’s not a small task.”

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Moritsugu reported to Beijing. Video producer Associated Press Wayne Zhang contributed.

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