China's solar expansion transforms Tibetan plateau herding, raising incomes and concerns
Chinese solar parks on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau allow some shepherds to graze livestock among panels, boosting incomes up to eight-fold. Researchers warn the projects fragment traditional pastures, erode nomadic lifestyles, and generate noise complaints, with limited local input.
Life has become unexpectedly easier and more lucrative for some shepherds on the world's highest plateau, after China began carpeting the area with solar panels in a drive to diversify its energy mix, according to a report by Reuters.
"It has made grazing much easier for us," said Li Yonglin, 25, one of those allowed to freely graze their sheep in a fenced solar park in Gonghe, a county in the northwestern province of Qinghai. "In the morning, we simply open the gate to the sheep pen and don't really need to look after them. They come back on their own in the evening, and we just pen them up." Li estimated the new approach had boosted his earnings to 50,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan ($7,496.14 to $8,995.37) from 10,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan when he followed the old way.
By July this year, state media said, 6,330 households in five townships had benefited from 56 grazing sites in Hainan, a culturally Tibetan area that encompasses Gonghe, but did not disclose how many got grazing access. Such early signs suggest China's projects sprawling over hundreds of acres on the vast Qinghai-Tibet plateau are boosting incomes for some, though researchers and others warn they are also eroding traditional ways of life.
One study estimated the region, sometimes called "the roof of the world", where nomadic communities have grazed livestock for millennia, holds almost half of China's solar energy potential. Solar overtook coal in July as the country's biggest source of installed power capacity, and authorities plan to expand wind and solar power generation by a further 53 per cent in the next five years.
The complex Li visits, sprawling over 148,000 acres (60,000 hectares), uses grazing sheep to reduce mowing costs, said Cao Jun, a safety supervisor for a State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) project in Hainan. It leads to a "win-win situation", he told Reuters, with power generated by the plant sent nationwide to cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
But the integration of livestock and solar infrastructure has not been universally welcomed. Researchers say solar projects are transforming life on the plateau, where thousands of Tibetan nomads were resettled into rural townships in the early 2000s. "You can find some places (to graze) around the solar panels, but these are not suitable for nomads and shepherds to hold their livelihood," said researcher Tsewang Dorji at the Tibet Policy Institute in India's Dharamsala. Such installations fragment once-open grazing lands, making herders' task of watching over livestock harder, said one researcher studying environmental conservation and new energy infrastructure there, who sought anonymity in order to protect collaborators.
Sheep from 16 households were allowed to graze in a solar park for part of the year, the government in Gonghe said in 2024. A small number of nomads were "tokenistically employed to graze sheep" but goats and yaks were generally excluded, said Mandie McKeown, advocacy director at the British-based environmental charity Foundation for Gaia. Wind rattling through solar farm posts and wires produced "persistent and unsettling" sounds that disturbed both people and animals, anthropology researcher Sanggay Tashi at the University of Colorado Boulder said in an article in June, citing people in Qinghai.
Not everyone in Gonghe is complaining, though. "Life has changed tremendously," said another shepherd, Wen Yujun, who now finds himself able to manage a herd of 700 to 800 largely on his own. "I never could have imagined it before," added the 43-year-old, who estimated his annual income had risen eight-fold to about 80,000 yuan.