Cranes and diggers busily prepare land beneath the red and white-striped chimneys of the Mengtai Group coal-fired power plant at the northern city limits of Ordos, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia. 

Privately owned Mengtai will soon add another two smoke stacks to the sprawling complex in an expansion that is the group’s biggest investment in its 20-year history. The new unit will burn coal to provide heating to nearby neighbourhoods as part of a regional policy unveiled in March that will add 5 gigawatts of coal power to western Inner Mongolia this year.  

The resource-rich region, a swath of grassland, desert and forest that spans most of China’s northern border with Mongolia, is trapped between China’s heavy industrial past and the bold low-carbon future vision of the nation’s leaders.