Xining

Xining sits at 2,275 metres elevation — the only city above two thousand metres with over 2 million people anywhere on Earth. The capital of Qinghai province draws 95% of its energy from renewables, not because of environmental policy but because of physics: thin air at altitude reduces combustion efficiency, making fossil fuel power generation prohibitively expensive compared to the solar radiation and wind resources that altitude provides in abundance.

Qinghai province generates over 75 million kilowatts of clean energy capacity, mostly solar and wind, with hydropower from the upper reaches of the Yellow River filling gaps. The province ran its entire electrical grid on renewable sources for a full week — a feat no territory of comparable size has replicated.

Xining runs 95% renewable not from green ideology but from physics — thin air makes combustion inefficient while altitude delivers exceptional solar radiation.

The city functions as the gateway to the Tibetan Plateau, the strategic and ethnic border zone between Han China and Tibetan territory. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway runs through Xining, connecting Beijing to Lhasa across permafrost at altitudes exceeding 5,000 metres. This infrastructure makes Xining the logistical chokepoint for Chinese access to Tibet — military, economic, and demographic.

The population reflects the strategic position. Xining is one of China's most ethnically diverse cities, with significant Tibetan, Hui Muslim, Tu, and Salar minorities alongside the Han majority. The Kumbum Monastery, one of Tibetan Buddhism's six great monasteries and the birthplace of the Dalai Lama's predecessor, sits 25 kilometres from the city centre.

Xining adapts to extreme altitude the way organisms adapt to extreme environments: by substituting one energy source for another when the conventional one becomes too costly. The city proves that renewable energy adoption is driven by economics, not ideology — altitude simply makes combustion a bad deal.