Global Site
In 2025, renewable energy, led by solar and wind, achieved multiple breakthroughs in scale of deployment, technological maturity, and economic viability, accelerating a fundamental reshaping of the global energy system that has been built on fossil fuels for more than a century. Globally, electricity generation from renewables has surpassed coal, and between January and June, the growth of solar and wind power alone was sufficient to meet the entire increase in global electricity demand. Renewable energy is no longer a frontier exploration, it has become a tangible force redefining the global industrial landscape.
Against this backdrop, Science named the rapid rise of renewable energy into its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year, while Nature included China's Leadership in Leapfrogging Renewable Energy Development as one of its Seven Technologies to Watch in 2025.
Anchored in the world's largest renewable energy market, China's wind power sector continues to advance in areas such as large-scale turbine development, supported by a highly integrated industrial and manufacturing ecosystem. Producing 70% of the world's wind turbines, China not only provides a practical, sustainable path for the global energy transition but also serves as the definitive real-world model for the large-scale, systematic development of new energy worldwide. It is within this context that the Shaoshan Blade Manufacturing Base of SANY Renewable Energy enters the narrative of Science—not as an isolated case, but as a representative expression of this broader transformation.
Faced with the manufacturing complexities brought by hundred-meter-class wind turbine blades, traditional production methods, relying heavily on experience and labor-intensive processes, have become unsustainable. As the world's first Lighthouse Factory in the wind power sector, the Shaoshan Blade Factory has introduced a highly digitalized manufacturing system that tightly integrates design, process, production, and quality control. Automated equipment operates in seamless synergy with intelligent systems, transforming the production of long blades from a high-difficulty engineering challenge into a replicable, controllable, and sustainable industrial process. This breakthrough not only resolved the technical bottlenecks of long-blade lean manufacturing but also redefines the production paradigm for large-scale renewable energy equipment.
The deeper change, however, lies in the evolving relationship between people and the manufacturing system. The production has shifted away from a reliance on human labors towards a work model centered on human-machine collaboration. Workers are liberated from high-intensity, repetitive tasks to take on high-value roles such as system monitoring, process judgment, and critical quality decision-making, enhancing manufacturing efficiency and stability. The evolution also reflects the Chinese new energy industry's commitment, beyond the pursuit of scale and speed, to safety, dignity, and long-term sustainable development. For China's renewable energy industry, ESG principles are increasingly being integrated into the design, organization, and operation of factories, arising organically from advanced manufacturing systems, rather than being retrofitted after implementation.
Inside the blade factory, advanced processes dictate precision: centralized resin infusion systems ensure the resin is injected into molds with clinical accuracy, while automated robotic grinding significantly elevates blade flatness. The sophisticated integration reduces labor costs by approximately 75%, cuts overall defects by 20%, and shortens delivery times by around 34%, enabling the factory to supply up to 2,000 high-performance wind turbine blades annually to both domestic and overseas markets. The deep integration of digitalization, automation, and intelligence simultaneously revolutionized the working environment and achieved a monumental leap in production efficiency and manufacturing precision.
What the Shaoshan Blade Factory represents is more than a snapshot of China's renewable energy industry, it reflects the way humanity is collectively embracing the energy transition. As renewable energy scales up and becomes increasingly systematized, true breakthroughs go beyond improvements in equipment performance, they also lie in the ability to transform complex technologies into sustainable, operational systems through systematic development, long-term thinking, and collaborative evolution. The capability of "organizing ourselves to address complex issues" is exactly what Science has been exploring for decades.
As a long-term participant and practitioner in the energy transition, SANY Renewable Energy will continuously leverage technological expertise, the evolution of its manufacturing systems, and accumulated global operational experience to transform cutting-edge capabilities into reliable and replicable clean energy solutions, to drive the global energy transition and make a decisive contribution to sustainable development and a net-zero future for humanity.
