The Yellow River winds through nine bends, carrying vast amounts of sediment before shedding its final burden in Dongying, Shandong Province in eastern China, where it fans out into a newborn delta before flowing eastward into the sea. Here, migratory birds find a stopover, saline-alkali soils and tidal flats stretch across the landscape, and abundant natural resources offer enormous potential. Yet industrial development and ecological conservation are like two ends of a balance that can easily tip with the slightest misstep.
Guohua Energy Investment Shandong Wudi Wind Farm
What should be protected, and how should development be pursued? At the mouth of the Yellow River, known as the Mother River, CHN Energy Guohua Energy Investment has provided an answer. Recently, its solution, which addresses the challenge of balancing new energy development with nature conservation through a three-dimensional-ecological approach, stood out from 448 solutions submitted by 388 companies at the 2026 "Golden Key — Solutions for the SDGs" initiative. With a click, the "golden key" gently unlocked a long-standing challenge for the industry.
Walk along the coastline, and the answers can be found in the sky, on the land and beneath the sea.
In the sky: making way for birds
At dawn, flocks of oriental storks sweep across the wind farm, their wings brushing the morning light.
Just a few years ago, such a scene would have made operations and maintenance staff uneasy. The Yellow River Delta is one of the world's most important stopover sites for migratory birds. The rotation of wind turbine blades and extensive photovoltaic panels can easily disrupt the migration and feeding of oriental storks and black-billed gulls, and in the worst cases lead to fatal bird collisions.
Traditional bird deterrence methods rely mostly on static devices, which birds quickly become accustomed to, causing their effectiveness to decline. The transformation began with a map. At the early stage of the project, the team worked with authoritative institutions and used drone-based remote sensing and infrared cameras to create a high-precision bird migration heat map. Based on the map, wind turbines were sited to completely avoid major feeding areas and primary migration corridors. Where secondary corridors could not be avoided, wider spacing was adopted to leave sufficient aerial passageways.
Guohua Energy Investment Shandong Xinhu Wind Farm
An even more innovative step was teaching machines to "see birds". Guohua Energy Investment independently developed an AI-powered acoustic-optical radar linkage system. Bird-detection radar can capture the trajectories of bird flocks from 3 to 5 kilometers away, while AI algorithms instantly identify flock density and flight altitude. Once a collision risk is detected, the system automatically triggers graded responses, such as adjusting turbine speeds and issuing gentle deterrent signals, enabling turbines to slow down when birds arrive and resume operation when they pass. At the same time, high-contrast coatings are applied to turbine blades, while low-intensity directional lighting is used at substations to reduce birds' disorientation caused by light at night.
With only a negligible reduction in power generation, the project has recorded zero bird collision incidents for three consecutive years. The number of bird species observed in the area has continued to rise, reaching more than 120, including the oriental stork, a nationally protected Class I species.
Across the land: bringing green to saline-alkali soils
Further inland from the coastline lies another story of ecological restoration. The soil in the Yellow River Delta has a high salt content, exceeding 0.6 percent in some areas. Vegetation is sparse, making natural ecological recovery difficult. Traditional restoration methods consume large amounts of water and are prone to recurring degradation.
Guohua Energy Investment's solution is to integrate wind power development with ecological restoration. Closely spaced arrays of wind turbines subtly alter the microclimate through physical mechanisms, disrupting the pathway by which salt migrates toward and accumulates in the soil surface while also reducing wind erosion. Salt-tolerant native plants are also planted in the spaces between turbines.
Restoration is a partnership with time. Over the 20-year life cycle of the wind farms, soil improvement continues to accumulate and evolve. Individual power-generation facilities are gradually transformed into integrated platforms that also serve ecological restoration functions. A total of approximately 10,000 square meters of slope protection works across the Yellow River Basin are also quietly contributing to soil and water conservation.
Slope protection at Guohua Energy Investment Shandong Guangrao Wind Farm
The results are visible on the land. After wind farms in Wudi, Binzhou and other areas began operation, a total of 7.52 million yuan (approximately 1.04 million USD) was invested in environmental protection, and more than 1,000 mu (approximately 66.7 hectares) of saline-alkali land was restored. Average soil salinity fell by 15 to 20 percent, while vegetation coverage rose from less than 10 percent to more than 65 percent.
Beneath the sea: generating power above panels, raising shrimp below
Back at sea, blue photovoltaic panels stretch across the water, while another world unfolds beneath them.
After multiple rounds of simulation tests with expert teams, the optimal tilt angle of the offshore photovoltaic platforms was precisely adjusted to 15 degrees. This increased power generation by 3 percent while keeping the highest point of the platforms approximately 17 meters above sea level, minimizing the impact of shading on marine primary productivity and truly enabling power generation above and aquaculture below.
Beneath the panels lies the aquaculture area of a fisherman surnamed Li. "Since the offshore photovoltaic project was built, electricity has been generated above while shrimp are raised below. The panels also provide shade in summer, and the shrimp survival rate is much higher than before. We've also been able to earn more," Li says with a broad smile. Water temperatures beneath the photovoltaic panels remain stable and water quality is good, increasing the yield of aquatic products such as shrimp and jellyfish by about 15 percent per mu (approximately 0.067 hectares). Annual fishery and aquaculture revenue in the project area is expected to exceed 27 million yuan (approximately 3.75 million USD).
Li's calculation is also a clear account of ecological and economic benefits. The project delivers more than 2 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity each year, equivalent to saving approximately 600,000 metric tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 1.6 million metric tons. Meanwhile, increased fishery output and higher local incomes resulting from ecological improvements mean that environmental protection is no longer simply an investment, but a source of sustainable returns.
Social benefits are also quietly taking root. Proactively integrating ecological protection has significantly shortened the project's development preparation period and reduced compliance risks, enabling promising projects to be implemented more quickly and steadily. At the same time, the company organizes an annual "New Energy Goes to Schools" program, which has reached more than 1,000 participants in total, planting the seeds of sustainable development in the hearts and minds of the next generation.
From birds in the sky, to greenery on the land, to shrimp beneath the sea, these three perspectives come together to form the same picture: new energy facilities are no longer ecological intruders, but restorers and shelters for nature. The "golden key" is opening the door to reconciliation between people and nature. Today, Guohua Energy Investment has distilled these experiences and is adapting and replicating them in desert photovoltaic projects in northern China's Inner Mongolia and offshore wind power projects in other coastal provinces.
This "golden key", forged at the mouth of the Yellow River, is now turning toward an even broader horizon.
