Battered, driven from their land, deceived or even imprisoned, China’s farmers are paying the price of the accelerated transition to green energy sought by authorities ahead of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
China wants February’s games to be the first fully powered by wind and solar energy. To that end, the government has multiplied the construction of renewable energy plants, but in the process it abused the common people, who had their land confiscated, warn activists and those affected.
In a city near Beijing, the Long family claims they have lost more than half of their crops to a solar power plant. Now, with little money, they burn corn husks and plastic bags to keep warm in winter.
“We were only promised 1,000 yuan (BRL 897.80) per mu. [unidade de medida chinesa que equivale a 667 metros quadrados] of land every year when the power company leased the land for 25 years,” Long said.
“We could earn more than twice as much from growing maize in the same area. Now, without land, I struggle to make a living as a daily worker,” laments the Huangjiao farmer.
China is the largest international producer of wind turbines and solar panels and intends to use the Winter Games as an opportunity to showcase its green technology and expand markets.
To ensure an uninterrupted supply during the games (and to clear the toxic cloud that surrounds the capital), the neighboring province of Hebei has built a gigantic power plant that receives all the energy from the province’s renewable projects.
The facility generates 14 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity each year, an amount similar to Slovenia’s annual energy consumption.
For farmers Long and their neighbor Pi, the green energy boom has made their lives more dangerous and difficult.
Pi says the farmers were forced to sign contracts (seen by the report) in which they ceded their land to the solar park built by the State Power Investment Group (SPIC), one of the five largest state-owned companies in the country.
Those who did not accept were attacked by the police, he reports. “Some were hospitalized, others were detained.”
Pi himself was detained for 40 days. Neighbor Long spent nine months in prison for “illegal rallying and disturbing the peace” after a public protest.
“The situation is similar to a mafia,” says Pi. “If you complain, then you will be reprimanded, arrested and convicted.”
The average annual rural income in Boading is nearly 16,800 yuan (about R$15,000). Both Long and Pi claim that they can no longer achieve the value.
The report was unable to confirm whether the electricity from the SPIC project will be used directly in the Olympic venues, because the information is not public. The company declined to respond.
But the government of Zhangjiakou, the other city hosting the Winter Games, said that since winning the bid in 2015, the region “has turned out of nothing into China’s largest non-hydro renewable energy base.”
Government subsidies for solar and wind farms also accelerated construction of projects in other areas of Hebei, coinciding with an attempt to reduce air pollution ahead of the sporting event.
Amnesty International has stated that “forced evictions, illegal expropriations and loss of livelihoods linked to loss of land” are its main human rights concerns in the solar and wind energy sector.
The world’s second-largest economy wants 25% of its electricity to come from non-fossil sources by 2030. But to reach the target, the country needs to double its current wind and solar capacity, raising activists’ fears of further expropriations.
Despite the ambitious commitments announced by Beijing for the ecological transition, environmental activists can hardly challenge the official discourse. Wanted, several said they were uncomfortable talking about the country’s ecological goals ahead of the games, for fear of reprisals.
In September, China announced strict compensation rules for confiscated land for green projects, including those in the energy sector.
“Our land rules also clearly govern which agricultural zone can be occupied, especially cropland,” said Li Dan, secretary general of the renewable energy professionals committee, which promotes green development.
If agricultural land is being used for renewable energy projects, there must be a benefit-sharing program, such as feeding greenhouses, he explains.
But several farmers claimed that companies declare farmland as wasteland to circumvent the rules.
Xu Wan, a farmer in Zhangjiakou, lost his land to a solar installation built in preparation for the Olympic Games.
“The company told us that this was unusable land, but it is actually very good agricultural land used by us farmers,” Xu said.
“They said they would give us 3,000 yuan (R$2,693.40) per mu of land. But in the end, we didn’t get anything,” he explains.
Zhangjiakou Yiyuan New Energy Development, which installed the solar energy project in the locality, did not respond to requests for comment.
Jiang Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said on a state-run industrial news website that in the future the country would need between 30,000 and 40,000 square kilometers more land to meet renewable energy needs.
“Where the land comes from has become the main factor that restricts the development of the industry,” he stated.
Renewable investments also accounted for more than half of the new projects approved last year as part of China’s global infrastructure plan, the “Belt and Road Iniative”.
Priyanka Mogul of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a British nonprofit that has studied the impact of Chinese investments in renewable energy abroad, said some developers were also accused of controversial practices when acquiring land abroad.
“The most prevalent problem was inadequate disclosure of the environmental impact assessment (…) followed by issues related to land rights and loss of livelihoods,” he said.
To reduce conflicts by confiscating land, China presents most solar farms as poverty alleviation projects, in which farmers get free electricity from solar panels installed on the roofs of their homes.
Under 2014 state guidelines, utilities must buy back the extra electricity in a program to lift two million families out of poverty by 2020.
The National Energy Administration stated that last year it benefited more than double the target.
But in Huangjiao, with more than 300 households, only two houses had solar panels. And residents said there was no program to install the equipment.
“At the central level, the government has good policies for farmers,” Pi said. “But when it reaches the local level, things change. Corruption at the base is intolerable”, he denounces.
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