China’s Giant Transmission Grid Could Be the Key to Cutting Climate Emissions

But are the country’s next-generation power lines a clean-power play or a global power move?

In early February, Chinese workers began assembling a soaring red-and-white transmission tower on the eastern edge of the nation's Anhui province.  The men straddled metal tubes as they tightened together latticed sections suspended high above the south bank of the Yangtze River.

The workers were erecting a critical component of the world’s first 1.1-million volt transmission line, at a time when US companies are struggling to build anything above 500,000 volts.  Once the government-owned utility, State Grid of China, completes the project next year, the line will stretch from the Xinjiang region in the northwest to Anhui in the east, connecting power plants deep in the interior of the country to cities near the coast.

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