Observing China’s rapid expansion of renewable energy systems from above PHOTO

China’s renewable energy expansion over the past year has reached an unprecedented scale, positioning the country at the centre of the global energy transition. In 2024, China installed more than half of all the new wind and solar capacity added worldwide. At its peak in May, the pace of deployment was so rapid that the country was effectively installing enough solar capacity to power Poland, with panels going up at an estimated rate of around 100 every second.

The sheer magnitude of these installations is difficult to comprehend at ground level. Chinese photographer Weimin Chu has spent the past three years documenting renewable energy projects from the air using drones. His images were featured in an award-winning Greenpeace exhibition last year, offering a rare visual record of China’s energy transition. He emphasized how perspective changes understanding, as highlighted in a feature published by the Yale School of Environment.

“From the ground, it’s hard to grasp the scale of these power plants,” Chu said. “But when you rise into the air, you can see the geometry, the rhythm — and their relationship with the mountains, the desert, the sea.”

This transformation is unfolding across China’s diverse geography. In the densely populated eastern provinces, rooftop solar panels are increasingly visible on residential and commercial buildings. Far to the west, in sparsely populated deserts and highland regions, vast wind farms and solar bases stretch across the landscape, reshaping previously untouched environments into hubs of industrial-scale clean energy production.

Chu’s photographic work, inspired by the visual traditions of Chinese ink painting, captures the interaction between large-scale infrastructure and natural landscapes. Chu explained that his focus shifted almost organically as renewable projects began to dominate the terrain he was photographing. “I started out just shooting landscapes,” Chu said. “But when I traveled to places like Guizhou, Yunnan, and Qinghai in 2022, I kept seeing wind farms and solar power plants appear in my camera frame. I realized this is the story of our time — and almost no one is documenting it in a systematic way.”

China’s renewable surge comes against the backdrop of its status as the world’s largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter. At the same time, it is pursuing one of the most ambitious energy transitions ever attempted. National policy is shaped by commitments to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060, targets that are driving the rapid restructuring of the country’s power system.

China added 360 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity in 2024 alone, according to figures cited by the World Economic Forum. This pushed China’s total installed wind and solar capacity to about 1.4 terawatts. That figure represents roughly one-third of the world’s total renewable capacity, estimated at 4.5 terawatts. Renewable electricity generation from wind and solar reached 366 terawatt-hours, making these technologies the largest sources of new power in China’s energy mix.

Alongside generation, China is investing heavily in its electricity grid to accommodate intermittent renewable power. Large wind and solar bases are being developed in resource-rich inland regions, while distributed generation is expanding in urban areas and industrial parks. In 2024, more than $80 billion was invested in grid infrastructure, including ultra-high-voltage transmission lines designed to carry electricity from remote production sites to coastal demand centers.

By Nazrin Sadigova