【By Observer News, Wang Yi】The rapid rise of China's clean energy technology has amazed the outside world. Recently, foreign media have also noticed that China has "surpassed the United States" in the "blood vessels" of clean energy - the green power transmission. Ismael Arciniegas Rueda, an economist from the Rand Corporation in the United States, remarked that although ultra-high voltage (UHV) technology was not invented by China, China has "raised it to a new height and constantly pushed the limits".
"How does China power electric vehicles and high-speed rail?" The New York Times published an article on October 11 with this title, stating that an ultra-high voltage transmission line stretching over 2,000 miles (approximately 3,219 kilometers) starts from the deserts in northwest China, which are filled with solar power plants and wind farms, and runs along ancient river valleys through mountain ranges all the way to the eastern coastal areas, finally reaching Anhui Province, an industrial hub where many of China's top electric vehicle and robot manufacturers are located.
"But this is just one of them. China has currently built and is operating a total of 42 such transmission lines, each with a power transmission capacity exceeding any power mainline in the United States," the report said. The article noted that China actively embraces clean energy technology, and its development speed has even exceeded the expectations of the Chinese government. Now, half of the new cars in China are new energy vehicles, and the entire 30,000-mile high-speed railway network is powered entirely by electricity.
In order to match this power demand, in April this year, wind and solar power generation in China accounted for a quarter of the country's total power generation, a proportion that is rare globally.
The report pointed out that however, the problem is that most of China's clean energy comes from the western and northern regions, which have abundant sunlight and strong winds, while the population and factories are mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal areas. The cloudy weather, windless nights, and slow rivers here limit the production capacity of clean energy. Therefore, how to efficiently transmit the green power from the northwest to the east has become the core task of China's energy system upgrade.
Sichuan-Chongqing 1000 kV UHV Project, Visual China
To address this challenge, China is accelerating the implementation of related work on new energy grid connection and absorption. In May 2024, the National Energy Administration of China issued a notice titled "On Doing a Good Job in New Energy Absorption Work to Guarantee the High-quality Development of New Energy." The notice stated that for 500 kV and above supporting power grid projects, the National Energy Administration will organize annual adjustments of projects within the national power development plan, and open up a "green channel" for major projects such as large-scale wind and photovoltaic bases and basin water-wind-solar integrated bases. It also accelerated the planning of a batch of new energy supporting power grid projects. At the same time, the list of key new energy supporting power grid projects to be started and put into operation in 2024 includes multiple UHV engineering projects.
In June this year, the National Development and Reform Commission held a press conference to introduce that in recent years, relevant departments have made efforts to promote new energy absorption, and have achieved phased results. Data show that the current new energy absorption rate across the country remains above 90%.
The New York Times found that China had previously underestimated the development speed of its wind power and photovoltaic industries, and is now building the world's first nationwide UHV transmission network, which stands in sharp contrast to President Trump's "drill, baby, drill" policy.
The Trump administration's energy policy advocated increasing fossil fuel mining and revoking federal-level projects promoting the use of clean energy. For example, the United States had planned to build the "Grain Belt Express" to transport wind power from Kansas to Illinois and Indiana. However, in July this year, the project was canceled by the U.S. Energy Department due to opposition from farmers and Republican legislators, who had been seeking $4.9 billion in loan guarantees.
The article pointed out that the "Grain Belt Express" project is only 800 miles long, compared to which the length of multiple UHV lines already built in China far exceeds this project. And in the United States, even before Trump took office, such transmission lines hundreds of kilometers long needed to go through a 17-year approval process.
The report also noted that China's multiple lines use direct current transmission technology, which allows almost no power loss during transmission over thousands of miles. This efficient power grid is not only significant for China's domestic energy layout but also affects the global effort to combat climate change, determining how quickly China can reduce its reliance on coal.
China proposed in 2020 to increase wind and solar power installation capacity to three times by 2030, a goal that was achieved six years ahead of schedule last year. There is now an "excess of clean energy" in western China, with sufficient wind, solar, and hydropower, but the power cannot be fully transmitted due to transmission bottlenecks.
David Fishman, a power industry consultant in Shanghai, pointed out that while China's State Grid is good at construction projects, it did not expect to prepare six years in advance. Data show that in recent months, about 10% of China's wind and photovoltaic power generation could not be connected to the grid.
Li Zhongming, Director of the Power Department of the National Energy Administration, stated at a news conference last year that to improve the ability of the power system to absorb new energy, it is necessary to accelerate the construction of new energy supporting power grid projects. On this basis, China is also actively promoting the improvement of system regulation capabilities and coordinated development between the grid and power sources, giving full play to the role of the grid as a resource allocation platform, flexibly adjusting dispatching operation methods, and enhancing inter-provincial mutual support and resource sharing capabilities.
The New York Times did some calculations, noting that China's total power consumption is now twice that of the United States. According to the plan, by 2050, the number of UHV transmission channels across the country will increase by two times.
As of the end of 2024, public data shows that there are 19 lines using 800 kV voltage, 22 lines reaching 1,000 kV, and one line ending in Gquan, Anhui, which uses 1,100 kV voltage. Its transmission capacity is enough to power more than 7 million American households or 40 million to 50 million Chinese households.
By comparison, the United States has only a few 765 kV transmission lines and some lines below 500 kV. If all the running 765 kV transmission lines in the United States are added together, their total length is approximately 2,000 miles, which is equivalent to the length of just one of China's lines.
According to the report, China launched the UHV grid construction plan during the 2009 global financial crisis to stimulate the economy and expand employment. At the same time, China also formulated grand plans for developing electric vehicles and high-speed railways. After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, China postponed nuclear power projects and accelerated the development of remote power transmission networks.
This measure has brought tangible environmental benefits. A new study released by the University of Chicago in August showed that since 2014, China's air pollution index has decreased by 41%, and the average life expectancy has increased by nearly two years. Beijing, once shrouded in smog, no longer uses coal power generation now, but instead relies on wind and solar power transmitted from hundreds of miles away to supply energy.
In fact, last year, some foreign media had already noticed China's long-term national power transmission network.
"We must learn from China and establish a national high-voltage transmission corridor," wrote a signed article by scholars Daniela Rus of MIT and former U.S. Energy Department analyst Nico Enríquez in the Washington Post in September 2024, calling on the U.S. government to accelerate the modernization of the aging power grid, because in the present era of a surge in artificial intelligence power consumption, "the United States may already be unable to match China's centralized energy system."
Last November, the BBC also described China's UHV grid as a "power bullet train," efficiently transmitting electricity from distant power plants to homes.
Ismael Arciniegas Rueda, an economist from the Rand Corporation in the United States, said that although UHV technology was not invented by China, China has "raised it to a new height and constantly pushed the limits," a model that is consistent with its performance in various technological fields related to energy transition.
He pointed out that when it comes to the scale of UHV transmission technology construction, China is "the only country in the world that can achieve this level," although countries like India and Brazil also have parts of the longest UHV transmission lines in the world, they still cannot compare to China in terms of construction scale and operational voltage levels.
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