Each morning, solar panels in the Kubuqi Desert capture sunlight from 150 million kilometers away, turning it into vast green power for thousands of households.

The Kubuqi is the seventh largest desert in China. Back in the 1980s, mobile dunes covered 61 percent of its area, while vegetation coverage was below 3 percent, earning it the title "sea of death."

How the Kubuqi desert looks like in the 1980s. [Photo/ China Central Television]

Today, vast stretches of blue panels have transformed its landscape. A project integrating desertification control with wind and solar power has brought about a historic shift — from a land where sand advanced and people retreated to one where green spreads and sand recedes.

The solar great wall in the "sea of death" [Photo/ China Central Television]

The northern and central Ordos New Energy Base in the Kubuqi Desert is China’s first large-scale wind and solar power facility with a total capacity exceeding 10 million kilowatts. It consists of a 5 million kilowatt energy storage section, a 4 million kilowatt wind farm, a 4 million kilowatt coal-fired power plant, and auxiliary energy storage with a capacity of 3 to 5 million kilowatts. The power generated here amounts to one-fourth of Beijing’s annual electricity consumption and will be transmitted in an integrated manner to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

Building a new energy base of this scale within a limited timeframe is a formidable task. Yet the builders overcame numerous challenges to make it happen.

By 2028, when all components of the base are fully operational, it is expected to send 40 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. With clean energy accounting for over 50 percent of its output, the base will help save more than 6 million metric tons of standard coal and cut carbon dioxide emissions by over 16 million tons each year.