https://j.people.com.cn/n3/2025/0728/c95952-20345895.html
Banyan Village in Qinghai Province is known as the province’s first “zero-carbon village.” “Banyan” means “a rich and happy place” in the Tu language. However, Banyan Village was once a completely different village, located on the mountainside and classified as one of the nation’s most impoverished areas. For many years, its residents suffered from inconvenient transportation, a lack of drinking water, and difficulty finding employment. In March 2017, 129 households and 484 people completed their relocation.
Then Huzhu County dispatched experts to help Banyan take advantage of its abundant solar resources and topographical conditions to build a sustainable solar development model. In 2017, a 2-megawatt (MW) solar power plant was completed within the village and connected to the power grid at the end of the same year. Since then, efforts have continued to explore the clean energy production potential of rooftops and vacant lots, expanding the scale of distributed solar power generation and developing integrated parking lots and energy storage facilities. In 2023, a grid-connected microgrid capable of supplying sustainable green electricity was built, realizing a green power self-consumption and surplus transmission system for the entire village.As a result of simultaneously promoting solar power generation and afforestation and greening projects, Banyan became the first “zero-carbon village” in Qinghai Province to be certified as “carbon neutral.” Statistics show that the village consumed 790,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green electricity in 2024, equivalent to a reduction of 97 tons of coal use and 258 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.At a traditional brewery on the east side of the village, an electric steamer controls the temperature, and the mellow aroma of barley wine from the highlands wafts forth. By 2023, the village had significantly improved production efficiency by electrifying its facilities, with annual production reaching 1.8 million yuan.
Green electricity is being used throughout the village, from drip irrigation and ventilation systems on farms to multi-functional electronic libraries in schools and charging stations for new energy vehicles. Thanks to technological and industrial innovation, policy support and the efforts of villagers, Banyan Village is blazing a trail of development that makes the most of local resources.
Image: People’s Daily
