West-to-East Electricity Transfer Project

The West-to-East Electricity Transfer Project is a long-running Chinese national initiative to move electricity generated by hydropower, coal and wind resources in the country's less populated western and northern provinces to the dense demand centers of eastern China, including Shanghai, Guangdong and the Yangtze River Delta. Formalized as a strategic priority in China's tenth Five-Year Plan around 2001, the program has been built out over multiple transmission corridors using ultra-high-voltage alternating and direct current lines, some spanning more than 2,000 kilometers. The project has been central to China's ability to site large-scale hydropower and renewable generation far from its major cities while still delivering that power to where it is consumed.