(TibetanReview.net, Jan26’26) – When it comes to clean energy, Tibet is the source and China’s power-hungry coastal megacities the consumers, with the unabashedly exploitative manner in which production is carried out by state-linked Chinese companies rendering the situation colonial, submerging or displacing entire Tibetan villages and centuries-old cultural centres, with, at most, only token compensation. China currently is building ultra-high-voltage power lines to connect Tibet’s vast hydropower, solar and wind projects with factory hubs in southern China, according to a scmp.com report Jan 22.
The project – which will shoot the equivalent of half the electricity produced by the Three Gorges Dam across China each year – comes as Beijing strives to push forward with its carbon-reduction plans and keep up with surging power demand from the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry, the report said.
The transmission line will stretch from the Tibetan Plateau to the megacities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south, passing through high-altitude areas and permafrost zones to form what Chinese officials have described as a “heavenly route for green power”.
Construction on the project kicked off in September, and on Jan 20 work began on the Guangdong section of the line, the report said, citing state-run People’s Daily. The entire project is due to be completed in 2029.
The project is designed to deliver more than 43 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year from a renewable energy base in the Tibet autonomous region to Guangdong province, which should enable the region to reduce its coal consumption by about 12 million tonnes, China Southern Power Grid, one of the project’s developers, has said.
“Tibet is a strategic energy base rich in hydropower, wind and solar, while Guangdong – a major economic powerhouse – leads the country in electricity consumption and needs larger-scale imports of power from other regions,” the company was cited as saying in a news release in September.
Building the power lines will require a total investment of about 53.2 billion yuan (US$7.64 billion), with a further 150 billion yuan needed for supporting infrastructure, the release was stated to have added.
On Jan 15, the State Grid Corporation of China – which is also a developer of the Tibet-Guangdong power line – pledged to increase its fixed-asset investments by 40% over the next five years to build a more efficient and greener power system. It expects to invest a record 4 trillion yuan through 2030. the report said.
The reporf also cited China Southern Power Grid as saying Jan 19 that it planned to invest 180 billion yuan in 2026, also a record high for the company.
So, expect many more Tibetan villages and nomadic communities to be bumped off from their traditional, sustainable ways of life to be thrown at the mercy of an utterly unfamiliar market economic forces.