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| Author | Alan Tu |
| Updated | October 22, 2021 |
Foreign media last month reported China’s plan to construct a 400-GW utility-scale wind and solar project in the deserts of western China. However, the report did not spark much discussion, since the capacity is higher than the market expected, and that details about the location and the share of solar capacity are scant.
At the leaders' summit of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) held on October 12, President Xi Jinping called for efforts to build a community for all life on Earth.
During the keynote speech via video link, President Xi stressed that:
China will promulgate guidelines and a series of supportive and protective measures
for key industries, and thus build a “1+N” policy framework to meet carbon emission
goals.
The country will continue to change the industrial structure and energy system,
replacing coal electricity with clean energy through actively developing renewable
energy and accelerate the progress of constructing utility-scale wind and solar
projects in deserts.
In addition, the first phase of the project, comprising 100 GW of wind and solar,
has begun construction in the desert.
This echoed the previous report that China was constructing a 400-GW utility-scale project.
According to investigation of InfoLink, module prices were relatively high in the third quarter of the year, due to upstream short supply and consecutive BOM price hikes. Worse still, power rationing and production cuts intensified the supply chain crunch. As production costs increased, module makers started raising price quotes, which end users found hard to accept. As a result, many projects put off deliveries.
As supply chain prices remain high, and given construction and delivering schedules, demand from the 100-GW Phase 1 of the wind and solar project will not emerge until the second half of 2022, when prices stabilize, bringing considerable demand to 2023. Against this backdrop, InfoLink revised forecast for demand during 2023 and 2025 upwardly. China saw positive outlook for domestic demand and is one step closer to its “Dual Carbon” goals, in terms of the integration of industry and energy system.