GreenergyDaily

Mar. 27, 2024

1. BYD's net profit surged 81% to CNY30 billion (USD4.2 billion) in 2023 from a year earlier, while the Chinese electric vehicle giant's revenue jumped 42% to CNY602.3 billion (USD83.4 billion), according to its annual earnings report released yesterday.

2. China has initiated dispute settlement proceedings against the United States at the WTO to safeguard its interests in the electric vehicle industry, the Chinese mission said on Tuesday and the WTO confirmed. China said it was contesting "discriminatory subsidies" under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that resulted in excluding goods from China and other WTO countries, Reuters reported today.

3. Chinese state-owned Sinopec and French oil major Total Energies have signed an agreement to produce sustainable aviation fuel, a statement released by Sinopec said on Tuesday. The companies will jointly build and operate a SAF unit at one of Sinopec's refineries in China, with an annual production capacity of 230,000 metric tons per year, the statement said. Burning SAF can reduce CO2 emissions by around 80% versus traditional jet fuel, according to data cited by Airbus.

4. In an interview with the Financial Times, Robin Zeng, founder and chief executive of CATL, said the much-hyped technology did not work well enough, lacked durability and still had safety problems.

5. Zhang Yaqin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, chair professor at Tsinghua University, and director of the Tsinghua University Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR), spoke at the Boao Forum for Asia 2024. He stated that driverless driving is much safer than human driving, with a safety factor of N times higher.

6. During the Clean Energy Expo China 2024 Photovoltaic Market Development Forum held on March 26, Zhao Yanhui, a senior analyst at Infolink Consulting, announced that the demand for photovoltaic systems worldwide will keep increasing in 2024, but the explosive growth will slow down. The estimated global installed capacity is predicted to be between 492-538GW.

7. On March 26, Trendforce estimated that the global new installed capacity demand for energy storage could reach 74GW/173GWh in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 33%/41%, maintaining a relatively high increase, but the growth rate has slowed down.

8. Chinese battery maker REPT Battero Energy Co., a unit of the world's top nickel producer Tsingshan Holding Group Co., rose on its first day of trade in Hong Kong on Monday after an initial public offering that priced near the bottom of the marketed range.

9. A batch of 20 made-in-China pure electric tour buses were exported to France after a departure ceremony was held on Tuesday in east China's Anhui. The 12-meter-long zero-emission double-decker buses will serve on multiple sightseeing routes in Paris.

10. South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group said on Wednesday it will invest 68 trillion won ($51 billion) over three years to bolster its growth potential in electric vehicles and new mobility business and separately hire 80,000 new employees. More than half of the investment, or 35.5 trillion won, will be allocated for new research and development infrastructure and assembly lines for electric vehicles, the group said in a statement.