Low-carbon Frontier: Renewable Energy and the New Resource Boom in Western China

Abstract China's west has long been framed as an undeveloped frontier, set apart by poverty and a resource-based economy. Since the 2000s, however, utility-scale renewable energy infrastructure expanded rapidly in western China, promising local economic benefits tied to national low-carbon transition. This paper contends that these have precarious unevenly distributed. I argue remade China “low-carbon frontier,” resource-rich region generates value for green highlight three features of frontiers: they are constructed spaces exploitable resources, creating investment boom; enclosed through new land arrangements construction, with little coordination; reliant on external markets policy decisions, entrenching dependency. These conditions make it difficult frontier regions capture sustained development from boom absence persistent central state supports. analyse comparing two sets technologies similar, but ultimately diverging, trajectories: small large hydropower south-west, solar wind north-west.