China is leading in Renewable Energy Development - How we are Investing

Not just solar and wind, but hydrogen and nuclear energy development - aligned with our investing approach on Market Environmentalism - how we are investing in all this

Yes China gets about 60% of its electricity needs from coal. Over the past few decades it has been difficult to breathe the air in the industrially developed parts of China due to coal energy generation, and not due to all the cars as they are mostly new catalytic converter-based or EV.

How will China make the air clean to breathe? China has embarked on a massive transformation of its energy usage, and is now leading the world in the development of clean and renewable energy development - from solar and wind technologies to now financially-viable hydrogen and nuclear technologies. China We see also that the robust scalability of these technologies will greatly help to meet the energy needs of energy-intensive generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and applications - see our articles in our substack on this.

In 2022, China installed roughly as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined, then doubled additional solar in 2023. - source link

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is a big focus area for China. But the challenge is how to make it make sense financially, economically and environmentally - this is the basis of our approach to environmentalism called Market Environmentalism, a set of four principles based on the principles of the Austrian School of Economics.

China is focusing on financially-viable hydrogen development.

According to a white paper published by the German Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE), "China currently leads in electrolysis." At 610 megawatts (MW), more than half of the globally installed capacity is located in the People's Republic. "With the rapid expansion of production capacities, Chinese manufacturers are creating cost advantages for the dynamically growing market," the VDE study concludes. - source link

China is taking an approach to hydrogen development that makes sense - with strategic development of renewable energies to help make financial and economic sense for hydrogen-based energy.

Check out this video below on a China Yutong-made hydrogen-powered truck doing a 1500 km test run in China - fascinating technology:

Nuclear

One big strategic focus area in this regard will be the development of nuclear energy in China. China’s existing nuclear power capacity, from 56 reactors, accounted for about 5% of total electricity demand. Check out this CNBC article on how China became the king of nuclear power. China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country - read from The Economist here.

China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in nuclear power .. However, this does not necessarily mean that China’s largest nuclear power companies .. are exceptionally innovative technologically. Indeed, the bulk of China’s current fleet of nuclear reactors consists of “third-generation” nuclear reactors that were initially designed by the U.S. company Westinghouse Electric (its AP1000) in the late-1990s and whose technology and designs Westinghouse transferred to China in 2008 as part of a contract to build four Chinese reactors based on the AP1000’s 2005 design. And while China is certainly to be credited for deploying the world’s first operational fourth-generation reactor, as one expert commentator noted at an ITIF roundtable, “That technology has actually been known to the world for decades; it’s just that China took the actions required to build and deploy it.” - source link

China is promoting now the development and implementation of thorium-based molten salt nuclear fission reactors. Why? Because there are some estimates that China has 20,000 years supply of thorium to supply all its energy needs - no need for much in the way of oil imports if that happens. Of course the widespread availability and operation of these reactors will only come on line towards the 2029 - 2030 timeframe, requiring China to continue use of fossil fuels and other forms of energy until then.

And why molten-salt reactors? Because in many reactor designed on molten-salt, the fissile material is embedded within the salt and as such present a much safer alternative than high pressure-container based nuclear reactors. It should be noted that the molten-salt reactors do pose challenges on the long-term material strength and corrosion risks - however research such as what MIT is doing is providing technological solutions to this challenge.

Dr. Ben Miles does a great job in explaining a lot of these aspects here in this video:

And China is also providing leadership in nuclear fusion development. Nuclear fusion is another form of nuclear energy, different from the current nuclear fission-based energy that has been around for several decades. See our other articles on nuclear fusion and how we are investing in nuclear fusion.

How we are investing in all this

We are formulating a follow-up posting on our strategy we are using in investing in nuclear energy - investments in nuclear fission, nuclear fusion and in a variety of jurisdictions - not only in China through the Hong Kong financial markets, but also elsewhere in areas including but not limited to the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australasia and Asia. We will make this research available to our paid subscribers - please subscribe today to receive this research.

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