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?
By James TempleEarly in February 2018, Chinese workers began assembling a soaring red-and-white transmission tower on the eastern
edge of Anhui province. They straddled metal tubes as they tightened together latticed sections suspended high above the south bank of the
Yangtze River.
The men were erecting a critical section of the world’s first 1.1-million-volt transmission line, at a time when US and Africa in an effort to sell Chinese goods and strengthen the country’s geopolitical influence.
Building, owning, or operating another nation’s critical infrastructure–be it seaports or transmission lines–offers a particularly effective route to exercise soft and sometimes not-so-soft power.
“This is really a battle over the developing world,” Nahm says. (Copyright 2018 Technology Review Inc. Distributed by Tribune Content
Agency, LLC)
Source: prime.economictimes.indiatimes
