\n<\/p>\n
Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second.<\/p>\n
The massive buildout is happening across the country, from crowded eastern cities increasingly topped by rooftop solar panels to remote western deserts where colossal wind farms sprawl across the landscape.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the ground, it\u2019s hard to grasp the scale of these power plants,\u201d said Chinese photographer<\/a> Weimin Chu. \u201cBut when you rise into the air, you can see the geometry, the rhythm \u2014 and their relationship with the mountains, the desert, the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n Chu has spent three years capturing the shift underway using drones to photograph power plants from overhead. His work, which draws from the visual language of traditional Chinese ink paintings<\/a>, was featured last year in an award-winning exhibition, presented by Greenpeace. A selection of those photos is reproduced here.<\/p>\n \u201cI started out just shooting landscapes,\u201d Chu said. \u201cBut when I traveled to places like Guizhou, Yunnan, and Qinghai in 2022, I kept seeing wind farms and solar power plants appear in my camera frame. I realized this is the story of our time \u2014 and almost no one is documenting it in a systematic way.\u201d<\/p>\n