Kubuqi Desert has become a model project for global sand control.

In the impetuous economic society, more and more people begin to take hiking as a kind of practice, trying to stay away from the present and carry simple bags to find poetry and distance. Crossing the desert on foot attracts a group of bold and cautious people, which is very difficult. This is really a cool thing. The endless yellow sand, the road ahead is full of challenges and unknowns. Put on hiking equipment, bring a few bags of dry food and a lot of water, and the sense of accomplishment of challenging the limits of the body and conquering nature can't help jumping out of the chest.

However, this is only a popular sport, and the desert is not friendly to human survival at all. The raging sandstorm, extremely dry climate and scarce water make it a forbidden area of life, threatening the lives of hikers at all times. For a country, desert has also become a major obstacle to regional development.

On the vast territory of China, the total area of desert and Gobi is as high as 654.38+0.28 million square kilometers, accounting for 654.38+0.3% of the total land area. Nearly 80% of these deserts are concentrated in the northwest of the motherland, with dry climate, inaccessible and more desolate. Among them, Kubuqi Desert, the seventh largest desert in China, has recently gained great fame and attracted much attention. This is not only because of the unique tourism characteristics of Kubuqi Desert, but also because people have made remarkable achievements in sand control in this desert in recent years, which has amazed the world.

The standard is ahead.

Kubuqi Desert is located in the central and western Inner Mongolia, on the south bank of the zigzag bend of the Yellow River on the Hetao Plain, with a total area of 1.86 million square kilometers. Because it is only 800 kilometers away from Beijing, it is also called "a basin of sand over the capital". The Book of Songs records that in the Western Zhou Dynasty, 3,000 years ago, Kubuqi Desert was once a grassland with abundant water plants and flocks of cattle and sheep, where multi-ethnic herders thrived. However, after thousands of years of impact of the Yellow River and the destruction of human civilization by war, the once prosperous land was gradually covered by yellow sand and became a barren land with few plants and little rain.

Not only that, the area of Kubuqi Desert is still expanding. When New China was founded, Kubuqi Desert pushed tens of meters to the bank of the Yellow River every year, and the inflow of sediment was as high as 654.38+600 million tons, which directly threatened the Hetao Plain, known as the "granary outside the Great Wall". Desertification land is like psoriasis, which makes the land unhealthy. For China, which is based on agriculture but has a serious shortage of arable land per capita, land desertification will seriously threaten people's lives and hinder the development of the western region.

In 1980s, there was a salt lake in the hinterland of Kubuqi Desert, which attracted the attention of the local government, and the saltworks based on the salt lake became a key enterprise. However, due to the deterioration of the environment, the area of salt lake is shrinking and gradually showing the momentum of being swallowed up by yellow sand. At this time, a young man named Wang Wenbiao resigned from the government and was invited to the saltworks as the factory director. After he took office, he saw the bleak management situation of the saltworks and decided to control sand. He immediately suggested that for every ton of salt sold, five yuan should be extracted for sand control. After eight years of persistence, tens of thousands of seedlings have been planted, and seemingly fruitless things have defeated the desert that is eroding the lake. The local environment near the salt lake has been improved, the boundary of the desert has been retreating, the area of the salt lake has gradually recovered, and the income of Yantian has made a historic breakthrough.

When everyone rejoiced at the good news, new problems began to appear. The output of the developed saltworks is increasing, and the surrounding markets are saturated, so it is necessary to transport the salt out to find new markets. The inherent mode of transportation needs to bypass more than 200 kilometers and cross the desert to reach the nearest Hangjinqi Dengkou Railway Station. After the implementation of this plan, most of the profits of the saltworks will be consumed by transportation costs.

At this time, Wang Wenbiao put forward a bold idea: build a road across the desert to transport salt out. At this time, what he got was no longer questioning, but decisive opposition from people around him. Although the operation of the saltworks has improved qualitatively, the funds needed to build this road will bring great pressure to enterprises. Moreover, the conditions of machinery and equipment at that time were far worse than today.

Although it is difficult to build a sand-crossing highway, it seems to be the only way out for Yantian to survive. Fortunately, the local government helped solve the financial problem. When dozens of bulldozers drove into the hinterland of the desert, it seemed that success was just around the corner, but the yellow sand fluttering in the wind quickly buried the built subgrade, and the daily hard work became futile.

Sharp contradictions are in front of us: it is not difficult to build roads and it is difficult to protect them. According to the experience of protecting salt lakes, ecological road protection has become the answer to the problem. The road construction team changed their working methods and afforested the roadside while repairing. Two years later, the first Sichuan-sand highway in Kubuqi Desert was built, and trees and medicinal materials were planted on both sides of the highway.

In the 1980s and 1990s, strong winds and yellow sand raged in Kubuqi Desert, and Beijing, 800 kilometers away, suffered from sandstorms. Nowadays, the dusty weather has been greatly improved. The governance of Kubuqi Desert cannot be separated from Wang Wenbiao and Yili Energy Group, which he later established. In the struggle between human beings and desert for thousands of years, it is obviously the most effective way to improve the ecological environment.

Explore new methods

At the13rd meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in September, 20 17, the report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme showed that 9.69 million mu of Kubuqi desert was rehabilitated and planted, with carbon fixation 15400 tons, water conservation of 24.376 billion cubic meters and release of 1838.

The State Forestry Administration also released data that the area of desertified land in China has been reduced from10.4 million square kilometers per year to 2,424 square kilometers; The area of desertified land has expanded from 3436 square kilometers per year to decrease by 1.98 square kilometers per year, realizing the historic transformation from entering sand into green and returning sand into sand.

With the continuous exploration and the emergence of new technologies, desert control presents a new dawn. Although the northwest region of China is most seriously affected by sandstorms and large-scale land desertification is serious, it is also the region with the richest solar energy resources. With the progress of solar energy development technology, many photovoltaic power station builders and operators began to explore the "photovoltaic sand control" mode combining photovoltaic power generation with desert control, hoping to embark on a new mode of industrial sand control with good results.

The photovoltaic faucet base project of Dalat Banner is located in Zhaojun Town, Dalat Banner, Ordos City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It was approved by the National Energy Administration on October 30th, 20 1 17/kloc-0, and it is one of the third batch of 10 photovoltaic power generation leading bases in China. The project promotes the development of solar power generation, desert ecological management and characteristic tourism through the mode of "photovoltaic+sand control+agriculture and forestry tourism".

Hetao Plain, where Dalat Banner is located, belongs to a typical temperate continental climate, with dry and little rain, with an average annual sunshine hours of about 3,000 hours, which is very suitable for building large-scale photovoltaic power stations. The project covers an area of 654.38+ten thousand mu, with a total investment of/kloc-0.5 billion yuan and a planned capacity of 2 million kilowatts. After completion, it is estimated that the annual power generation will reach 4 billion kWh, and the output value will exceed 654.38+0.5 billion yuan. Industries at all levels can drive farmers and herdsmen around to increase their income and get rich by about 1500 people, and increase employment by more than 2,000 people.

At the same time, the completed photovoltaic power generation base will increase the local forest coverage by nearly 0.6 percentage points, effectively curb the expansion of Kubuqi Desert, prevent and control 200,000 mu of desertified land, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3.2 million tons and reduce dust by 700,000 tons every year, which will play an important role in regional land desertification control and ecological environment restoration. The leading base project of photovoltaic power generation in Dalat has not only produced huge economic benefits, but also produced environmental improvement benefits that can not be ignored.

"Power generation on board, repair under board, planting trees between boards" is a three-dimensional new industrial cycle model adopted by the photovoltaic base in Dalat Banner. First, use bulldozers and other construction machinery and equipment to level sand dunes, then place solar photovoltaic power generation devices on the leveled land, and then plant cash crops on the land below the photovoltaic panels. In addition to absorbing solar energy, photovoltaic panels can also block direct sunlight, reduce evaporation by 20% to 30%, effectively reduce wind speed, improve the living environment of plants, and effectively fix sand and retain water for the growth of various landmark vegetation. Conversely, the improvement of ecology has a positive impact on solar power generation. Dust has a great influence on power generation, and vegetation can reduce dust.

Create a model project

Desert photovoltaic engineering is the competition between man and nature. Improving the quality of desert soil through engineering construction benefits from the improvement of local environment when people enter the sand and retreat. The completed photovoltaic equipment can convert sufficient, clean and pollution-free solar energy, achieve the purpose of energy saving and emission reduction, and reduce the greenhouse effect. At the same time, photovoltaic equipment has the advantages of safety, reliability, long service life and simple maintenance. For people near the desert, it can increase the income of herders and reduce the damage to vegetation when grazing in pastoral areas.

However, such a multi-objective good project must also face the worst construction environment in the desert. Chen Tao, director of Shantui Inner Mongolia Office, was transferred to Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on October 4, 2010, mainly responsible for market research, customer visits, feedback collection and national macro-policy energy development support, and participated in the photovoltaic leading base project in Dalat Banner on October 20, 2010. According to Chen Tao, "the construction difficulties mainly focus on the confrontation with the harsh sandstorm and high temperature. Dust has seriously damaged the cooling system of the equipment water tank, which requires the cleanliness of the engine air system and the sealing and humanization of the cab. The technical requirements for equipment professionalism and personnel are very high. "

Ordos Oasis Garden General Contracting Company, which participated in the project construction, is a loyal user of Shantui. In this project, 50 bulldozers, old and new, including DH 17 and SD 16L, are put into use. During the construction, Shantui Office sent experienced technicians to track the usage of the equipment on site, exchange construction technology with drivers and collect feedback. In the later stage of the project, Shantui developed DH 17-DS full hydraulic bulldozer and hydraulic SD 16D bulldozer according to the desert construction conditions, which won valuable time for the tense construction in the later stage.

While the country is promoting sand control in the west, social capital has also joined in. According to Wang Wenbiao, chairman of Yili Resources Group, the effect of sand control by enterprises will be better than that by government finance. "Desert control is like a bottomless pit. Sand control through national finance, simply for sand control, will not get particularly good results. More importantly, it is difficult for farmers and herdsmen in the desert to obtain corresponding benefits by a single sand control model, and the government has to take money to subsidize. "

In the mode of industrial sand control, the government only needs to give enterprises corresponding policies without investing funds. "We turn sand control into coins, while controlling sand, we develop sand industry, run industry by sand, control sand by profit, and increase the income of farmers and herdsmen." Wang Wenbiao said.

The project is constructed by stages, in which the planned capacity of the first phase is 500,000 kilowatts, accounting for a quarter of the total planned capacity. The investment of the first phase project is about 3.75 billion yuan, and the annual power generation is about 800 million kWh. The first phase of the project was undertaken by Inner Mongolia Company of State Power Investment Corporation, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group Corporation and China Energy Conservation Group Corporation, and started construction on June 30, 2008. After nearly half a year of intense construction, the barren sand dunes have been covered with large areas of solar photovoltaic panels, becoming a "blue ocean." 20 18 12 10, the first phase of the project has been successfully completed, and full-capacity grid-connected power generation has started. Although the desert is a part of nature, it is not hopeless.

Although the formation of desert is inseparable from natural factors, man-made destruction has also contributed to the deterioration process. Similarly, human power can reverse this process. Today, what people have achieved in the Kubuqi Desert is the best example. (Please specify www.seetao.com Wang Dao) See Wang Dao Strategy Column Editor/Wang Xufang.