One of the most interesting stories from the Emerging Markets came from China and the success they have recently experienced with their ‘artificial sun’.
China, as with many countries declared their intentions to be “Net-Zero”, China’s approach to achieving their objective is decidedly different from many developed countries. Last October they announced their intentions to build 150 new reactors in 15 years which could amount to China investing $440Bn in Nuclear energy.
Additionally, China’s research efforts have focused on clean fusion energy which has begun to bare fruits of their labour as one of their reactor research facilities ran at 70 million degrees Celsius (Almost five times as hot as the sun) for around 17 minutes.
As an aside, Nuclear fusion is different from what most imagine when they think of Nuclear power plants, that is Nuclear fission, think of the big nuclear power plant from The Simpsons. Nuclear fission creates energy by splitting large, unstable atoms while fusion takes small atoms and brings them together.
Nuclear fission is a somewhat controversial energy source as while it produces significantly less CO2 emissions compared to traditional energy sources, the disposal, and maintenance of Nuclear fission power plants is a difficult tasks and associated with several controversies e.g. Chernobyl, three-mile island, and Fukushima.
Now, why is China’s success with Nuclear fusion interesting? China’s fusion facilities run on raw materials which are almost inexhaustible and produce non-polluting emissions meaning the energy they generate is as clean as it comes and with this success China could become a leader in the race to “Net-Zero”, albeit a somewhat controversial energy source.
As mentioned in our previous post, we see ‘ethical investing’ as a key thematic play we are keeping a close eye on.
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