(TibetanReview.net, Mar04’26) – More than just clean energy sources, China’s sprawling solar farms in Tibet may be vital military strategic assets, going by their tell-tale locations across India’s border, according to a moneycontrol.com opinion piece Mar 4.
Tibet Autonomous Region, the western half of Tibet proper, now hosts over 200 solar plants and farms of varying scales, the piece said, citing a recent geospatial research by the Takshashila Institution. The total installed solar capacity of projects above 20 MW alone stands at over 9,300 MW, with 74 operational and 20 more to come. In 2025 itself, the region added 2,600 MW from just two project.
These include the world’s highest photovoltaic station which China has commissioned at 5,200 metres above sea level, generating 150 megawatts from panels engineered to work where most equipment fails. And what looks on paper like a renewable energy programme appears on a map like something else entirely, the piece pointed out.
Tibet’s capital Lhasa alone accounts for over 100 documented solar installations. The region receives solar radiation between 5,852 and 8,400 MJ/m² per year, placing it alongside the Atacama and Sahara deserts as one of the sunniest places on Earth. China has clearly grasped what this means.
While these are impressive figures, the more revealing story lies not in capacity figures but in the strategic places where these installations are located. Satellite imagery and spatial analysis show that a significant number of solar projects are located near military airfields, listening posts, radar stations, highways, and railway lines, Prof Nithiyanandam Yogeswaran of the Takshashila Institution, who wrote the opinion piece, has pointed out.
Around Shigatse Peace Airport, a facility that began life as a military base in 1973, three solar farms covering nearly three square kilometres have come up since 2020, he has noted. In Gar County, a 30 MW solar farm sits just three kilometres from a Circularly Disposed Antenna Array, a sophisticated military listening post with two rings of 11 antennas each. The farm was built from ground clearance to full operation in under three months. Near Pangong Tso, compact solar arrays have been installed within fenced compounds to power radar equipment on a militarised mountain slope.
Employing technological prowess to overcome natural challenges, these projects deploy bifacial panels, AI-driven monitoring systems, grid-integrated battery storage, and thermal energy storage pits to counter seasonal variation.
Prof Yogeswaran has noted that Near Shigatse, a newly built solar farm features what appears to be a 100-metre-by-100-metre thermal energy storage reservoir, designed to store heat and address winter shortfalls. Battery storage units at sites like Mahang ensure an uninterrupted supply even when snow blankets the panels in December. These are not experimental fixes. They are operational solutions, deployed at scale, in some of the harshest conditions on the planet, he has pointed out.
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According to him, what China is doing in Tibet fits squarely within the definition of grey zone warfare: the use of tools and activities that fall below the threshold of conventional military conflict but steadily alter the strategic balance.
What makes these renewable energy infrastructure strategic is the fact that they are systematically co-located with military installations, that they enable year-round habitation in previously seasonal border settlements, that they power the expansion of permanent towns within striking distance of Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh, and that the electricity they generate feed into transmission corridors that could eventually supply other regions. According to Prof Yogeswaran, the cumulative effect is strategic, not environmental.
What also makes these projects a matter of geostrategic concern is the fact that they have been built with urgency to meet emergency needs. For example, the Gar County solar farm was built in under 90 days, with the infrastructure being hardened against disruption, because solar and battery systems do not depend on fuel convoys across mountain passes.
While India tends to discuss China’s activities in Tibet through the lens of hydropower and dam-building on the Yarlung Tsangpo, the solar expansion deserves equal, if not greater, scrutiny. It is quieter, faster, more dispersed, and harder to contest diplomatically, the piece said.