Looking west from Ningxia Tengger Desert New Energy Base invested by China Energy Investment Group in Zhongwei City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, rows of dark blue photovoltaic panels stretch endlessly like a vast river under blazing sunshine. According to project officials, this 3-million-kilowatt photovoltaic power station can generate enough electricity annually to meet the power demand of 4.8 million ordinary households for a whole year.

Deserts were once stereotyped as barren lands with limited development potential. Recent field investigations show that state-owned central enterprises have focused on ensuring energy resources supply and making forward-looking industrial layouts in recent years. They have boosted development potential through effective investment, actively aligned with the West-to-East Power Transmission Project and the East-to-West Computing Resource Allocation Initiative, and injected strong impetus into the high-quality development of northwest China.

A green-oriented transformation is taking place across the northwest region.

At the end of last year, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued guidelines on promoting high-quality development of power grids, proposing to raise the proportion of new energy power generation to around 30 percent by 2030.

Abundant sunlight and vast land endow northwest China with superior conditions for wind and solar power development.

As one of the first batch of large-scale wind and solar power bases built mainly in deserts, Gobi areas and barren lands, the 200,000-kilowatt photovoltaic desertification control base project in Liangzhou District invested by PowerChina has been fully connected to the power grid.

"The project can generate 368 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity every year, equivalent to saving about 123,500 tons of standard coal and cutting carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 371,500 tons annually," said Lu Huaichang, General Manager of Gansu Branch of PowerChina New Energy Group.

At new energy bases in northwest China, green development means far more than clean power supply; it also realizes the ecological vision of turning deserts into oases.

Field monitoring data shows wind force reached Level 5 at the observation platform of Ningxia Tengger Desert New Energy Base, yet almost no sand dust could be felt in the wind.

"This is largely attributed to drought-resistant plants growing under photovoltaic panels," explained Lu Jun, Deputy Chief Engineer of Zhongwei Equipment Maintenance Center of China Energy Longyuan Power Ningxia Company. Photovoltaic panels reduce wind speed and block sunlight on the ground. Together with three rows of 1.8-meter vertical sand barriers and full coverage straw checkerboard sand barriers, they effectively fix sand dunes and create favorable growing conditions for drought-enduring vegetation.

Statistics indicate that by the end of the 2025 growing season, the local vegetation coverage rate within the project area has risen from less than 0.5 percent to 28 percent. Mobile sand dunes have been turned into semi-fixed sandy land, attracting wild animals such as goitered gazelles, red foxes, sparrows and magpies.

Against such large-scale power construction in remote desert areas, a sound interactive mechanism between resource endowments and market demand has taken shape, forming a sound pattern of coordinated development.

Lu Jun introduced that electricity generated at Ningxia Tengger Desert New Energy Base will be transmitted to Hunan Province via the Ningxia-to-Hunan Power Transmission Project.

"According to design standards, this power transmission line can supply roughly one-sixth of Hunan’s total annual electricity demand," he noted.

On one hand, the West-to-East Power Transmission initiative enables steady power delivery from resource-abundant western regions to eastern areas with huge power consumption demand.

On the other hand, industrial integration between computing power and electric power has upgraded northwest China’s role from a mere energy exporter to an important computing power supplier.

In Zhongwei City of Ningxia, China Unicom has deployed massive intelligent computing servers relying on key hub nodes of the East-to-West Computing Resource Allocation Initiative, undertaking massive data processing tasks for leading enterprises including Tencent, Baidu, ByteDance and Kingsoft Cloud. In Qingyang City of Gansu Province, China Mobile has renovated communication buildings into intelligent computing centers, put domestic ten-thousand-card inference clusters into operation, and implemented integrated direct power supply solutions powered by green electricity.

"Power price here is 20 to 30 cents lower per kilowatt-hour than in eastern China, which can save tens of millions of yuan in electricity costs annually for every ten thousand peta operations of computing power," said Wang Mingchun, Deputy General Manager of Planning and Construction Department of China Mobile Gansu Branch. "This advantage comes from market-oriented and sustainable cost efficiency rather than government subsidies."

Green development reshapes regional development foundations, coordinated development optimizes industrial layout, and innovative practices foster inherent driving forces for industrial upgrading across northwest China.

Inside China Mobile Data Center in Qingyang, Gansu Province, servers immersed in special liquid have drawn wide attention.

"This adopts immersion liquid cooling technology with non-conductive and non-corrosive electronic fluorinated liquid, which can work safely even when powered on," explained Jing Lirong, Manager of East-to-West Computing Resource Allocation Center of China Mobile Qingyang Branch. "This technology has optimized the power usage effectiveness from around 1.2 to about 1.07, bringing astonishing electricity savings for large-scale data centers."

High-quality computing and network capabilities constitute core competitiveness of computing centers. China Unicom Zhongwei Cloud Data Center has built a highly reliable and low-latency computing network to support massive data transmission for large AI models.

The transmission latency between Yinchuan and Zhongwei is merely 1 millisecond, 2 milliseconds among intra-regional cities, 4 milliseconds among provinces in northwest China and 8 milliseconds connecting the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, achieving zero packet loss in data transmission. To guarantee ultra-low latency, China Unicom has completed verification of ultra-long-distance high-throughput lossless transmission covering 3,000 kilometers, enabling terabyte-level data delivery within minutes.

From barren deserts to lush oases, from power output to computing power supply, profound changes driven by effective investment and targeted at fostering new productive forces are unfolding across western China, delivering stronger momentum and solid support for regional high-quality development.