Toward sustainability

New-energy battery manufacturing is another key industry in Huizhou. The sector's output value exceeded 100 billion yuan last year, with many leading manufacturers in operation.

In pursuing sustainable and closed-loop development of the battery industry, Huizhou is also bolstering the battery recycling market - a promising emerging field driven by the popularity of new-energy vehicles.

Power batteries will face a wave of large-scale retirements in the future. According to the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, the total of retired power batteries in the country is expected to reach 116 gigawatt-hours (780,000 metric tons) next year.

Lithium-ion batteries consist of metals like cobalt, nickel and manganese, which possess toxic properties and could contaminate water sources and disrupt ecosystems. It's said that water wouldn't be consumable for 50 years if a pack of lithium batteries were to be thrown into it.

Two major sustainable methods for handling retired batteries are to reuse or shred them into mineral elements. But they carry potential risks of damaging the environment during processing. To address environmental pollution concerns associated with the problem, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2018 launched a "white list" of companies that can meet the required standards of recycling retired power batteries. By the end of last year, 156 enterprises in the country, including two in Huizhou, had been included in the list.

Sinocli New Energy Technology (Huizhou) - a factory engaged in repurposing used batteries for electricity storage and powering two-wheel electric scooters - was enlisted last year. "Retired batteries are not useless. It's just their energy capacity that is reduced. We can recycle them and make full use of them with other applications," says Sinocli Chairman Chen Zhonghua.