Paired assistance provides power for green development (4)

Solar silicon wafers are packed in Dongying, Shandong province, in January. LIU YUNJIE/XINHUA

Wider cooperation

Shandong province in East China and Gansu province in Northwest China — whose paired assistance on poverty relief has already yielded significant results — will join hands again in the campaign for carbon neutrality.

When delivering the work report to the first session of the 14th Gansu Provincial People's Congress in January, provincial Governor Ren Zhenhe highlighted a Gansu-Shandong power transmission project that was launched last year.

Gansu will further tap its rich energy resources this year, he said.

To make the province a major clean energy production zone, Gansu will complete construction of a number of national — and provincial-level wind and solar energy bases, while advancing construction of pumped storage power stations and comprehensively promoting the Gansu-Shandong project, he said.

Pumped storage power stations pump water to reservoirs at higher locations by using surplus green electricity during off-peak consumption periods, then regenerate to meet emerging power needs, which is regarded as a cost-effective way of addressing the intermittent nature of wind and solar power generation.

According to the Gansu authorities, the province has made progress in a demonstration renewable energy project that will support power transmission to Shandong.

The first wind-driven generator for the 6-million-kilowatt renewable energy project, which combines facilities for wind and solar power generation, as well as renewable energy storage, was installed at a mega energy base in Gansu's Qingyang city on Nov 30.

The 40-billion-yuan-plus project is expected to generate 14 billion kWh of clean electricity a year, which means 4.2 million tons of standard coal will be saved and carbon dioxide emissions will be cut by 11 million tons.

The plant will be completed and put into operation together with the Gansu-Shandong transmission line during the middle stages of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period.

Next year, Shandong will make further efforts to accept more green power from other regions and will raise the amount of renewable electricity it receives from other regions to around 125 billion kWh, according to Zhou Naixiang, Shandong's governor, when he delivered the work report to the 14th Shandong Provincial People's Congress in January.

Sun Ruisheng in Taiyuan contributed to this story.