State Grid Corporation of China, the country’s state-owned power grid company, presented three programs on Oct. 29 in Yerevan, Armenia, that it says protect birds and habitats along its network. The presentation took place at a China Corner side event at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), where a report series on biodiversity conservation by Chinese companies was launched featuring the company as a case study, according to its press release.
COP17 ran from Oct. 19 to 30 and was the first global review of progress toward the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022 with targets for 2030. The conference closed by adopting the Yerevan Pathway, a negotiated response to the outcome of that review.
The three programs, as described by the company
| Program | What it does | Reported scale |
|---|---|---|
| Birds’ Guardian Grid | Protects migratory birds around power lines | 24 provinces, more than 40 migratory bird habitats and all four of China’s flyways; more than 16,000 birds rescued or protected |
| Nests of Life | Artificial nests so birds avoid dangerous spots on towers, with a record kept for each nest | From Sanjiangyuan on the Tibetan Plateau to high-altitude grasslands in six provincial-level regions |
| Green Power Ark | Zero-carbon electricity for remote habitats through wind, solar and storage microgrids | 17 national-level protected areas in nine provinces |
The company also presented a report on its Shanghai subsidiary describing how it builds biodiversity criteria into planning, design, construction, grid operations and its supply chain in a megacity.
What was already known
The programs are not new. According to a China Daily feature from June 2026, the artificial-nest project started in 2016 in Sanjiangyuan, in Qinghai province, and had installed more than 5,300 nests by 2024. The same outlet dates the Green Power Ark to 2022, with 13 sites by 2023, and puts the number of protected birds rescued by the company since 2021 at more than 15,000.
According to that document, the root issue works in both directions: avian species roosting or building nests on cables and towers may trigger power failures, while unprotected wires present an electrocution hazard to them.
