In a country where you can find everything from chopsticks to slippers designed to look like pandas, one Chinese energy company is going a step further by building 100 solar farms shaped like the bears along the route of the ambitious “One Belt, One Road” initiative.
Panda Green Energy Group (熊貓綠色能源) has already connected one such 50-megawatt plant to the grid in Shanxi Province, the first step in a public relations stunt that emphasizes the cuddly side of the world’s No .2 economy.
Built with darker crystalline silicon and lighter-colored thin-film solar cells, the plant resembles a cartoon giant panda from the air.
Photo: EPA
“The plant required an investment of 350 million yuan [US$51.8 million], and it would require investment of US$3 billion for 100 such plants,” Panda Green Energy chief executive Li Yuan (李原) told reporters, but did not say where the longer-term investment would come from.
The Hong Kong-based firm is currently in talks with Canada, Australia, Germany and Italy to launch more panda-shaped power stations.
The “One Belt, One Road” initiative is a plan to emulate the ancient Silk Road by opening new trade corridors across the globe using roads, power lines, ports and energy pipelines.
One 100-megawatt panda power plant would be expected to generate 3.2 billion kilowatt-hours of energy over 25 years, the company said, capable of supplying power to more than 10,000 households annually.
Panda Green Energy is constructing its second panda power plant in Shanxi, which accounts for one-quarter of China’s coal reserves.
Utilization of one panda solar power plant would save the equivalent of a total of 1.06 million tonnes of coal and cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 2.74 million tonnes in 25 years, the company said.
The firm has been investing in and running solar power plants in China’s major solar hubs, such as Xinjiang and Qinghai Province, as well as some solar projects in Britain.
Shanxi aims to install 12 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2020 versus 1.13 gigawatts installed in 2015.
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