By Hayk Sahakyan

Across the vast Kubuqi Desert in northern China, millions of solar panels stretch across the sand, creating what has become known as the “Solar Great Wall” — one of the world’s most ambitious renewable-energy projects.

Located in the Ordos region of Inner Mongolia, the project combines massive solar-power generation with efforts to control desertification. The photovoltaic panels cover large areas of otherwise barren land, while vegetation is being planted beneath and around them to help stabilize the shifting sands.

The broader Ordos Central-Northern New Energy Base is planned to reach approximately 16 gigawatts of total capacity, including solar, wind and supporting power infrastructure. Once fully developed, it is expected to generate roughly 40 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.

The project is part of China’s broader strategy to build enormous renewable-energy bases in its northern and western regions and transmit electricity over long distances to major population centers such as Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

But the project is about more than electricity.

Solar panels can provide shade and reduce the amount of water lost through evaporation, creating more favorable conditions for certain plants. Vegetation can then help protect the soil from wind erosion and stabilize the desert surface. In this way, developers are attempting to combine renewable-energy production with ecological restoration.

The scale of the development is difficult to appreciate from the ground. From satellite images, the rows of photovoltaic panels form enormous geometric patterns across the desert.

Ordos is also home to another remarkable solar installation: a giant horse-shaped arrangement of photovoltaic panels known as the “Junma,” or “Galloping Horse.” The installation uses hundreds of thousands of panels to create an image visible from above and has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the largest solar-panel image.

China's enormous desert solar projects reflect the country's rapidly expanding investment in renewable energy. They also illustrate a distinctive approach to the energy transition: rather than relying only on small distributed installations, China is building huge renewable-energy bases in regions with abundant land and sunlight, connected to the country's high-voltage electricity network.

The Kubuqi project therefore represents more than a field of solar panels. It is an experiment in using one of the world's harshest environments to produce electricity while attempting to restore parts of the landscape.

If the project reaches its planned scale, the Solar Great Wall could become one of the most striking symbols of China's transformation of its energy system — a vast industrial landscape where solar panels, transmission lines and newly planted vegetation meet the desert horizon.