Datong, ChinaThe sides of the roads surrounding this city in northern China are coated in a thick layer of coal dust. It falls off trucks hauling the black rocks to power plants, steel factories, and chemical plants across the nation. Here in Shanxi, the largest coal-producing province in a country that accounts for half the world’s coal burning, mines have been dug under one-eighth of the land’s surface.
Yet the landscape in Shanxi is changing. Since a 250-acre solar power plant shaped like a panda opened five years ago, the hills around Datong, Shanxi’s coal-mining center, have been blanketed with solar panels. Solar capacity in the province has been expanding at 63 percent per year, wind power at 24 percent. Seemingly everywhere one looks outside Datong there are either mines or expanses of solar panels, sometimes in quick succession.
The striking alternation illustrates Shanxi’s latest role: China has tasked its coal powerhouse with modeling the transition to clean energy. Besides building out clean energy sources—including in particular the infrastructure to use hydrogen as a fuel—the province is supposed to conduct large-scale tests for upgrading factories and power plants and retraining fossil-fuel workers.
