CHINA switched on the world’s second-biggest hydroelectric dam today, announcing the “world-class” new power station as a victory for socialist planning ahead of the Communist Party centenary celebrations on Thursday.

Two of its million-kilowatt generating units, each the weight of the Eiffel tower, have began generating energy. Once fully operational, the 954-foot-high Baihetan dam on the Jinsha river at the Sichuan-Yunnan border will have 16 such units, making it the second-biggest generator of hydroelectric power on Earth after the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze, which has 22.5m kilowatts of generating capacity. Designers say it will eliminate the need to burn 20 million tons of coal a year and reduce annual carbon emissions by 51m tons.

China invests heavily in hydroelectric power, seeing it as one of the most important sources of green energy as it seeks to end reliance on fossil fuels. The country is on course to meet its Paris agreement targets on reducing emissions a decade early.

But some environmentalists say huge hydroelectric power projects create as many problems as they solve, flooding communities, disrupting river ecology and having unpredictable consequences for wildlife and fish stocks.

Baihetan chief engineer Chen Jianlin said “there is no better station” around the world, citing such innovations as being the world’s first “seamless” dam, using Chinese-developed construction techniques to avoid thermal cracks.

The project’s deputy director He Wei said that China’s first hydropower station had been abandoned a century ago when foreign engineers left, because “China was poor and weak.”

“After New China was founded, Chinese engineers worked to close the gap with foreign technologies. Now we are even technologically ostracised by some countries. But it is China that is leading the world in hydropower development.”