TotalEnergies, CTG plan EV charging outlets in China

France's TotalEnergies and Chinese state-controlled power firm China Three Gorges (CTG) have signed an agreement to establish a 50:50 joint venture (JV) to develop electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure within China's Hubei province.

The JV company will develop EV high power charging infrastructure and services by installing and operating more than 11,000 charge points by 2025. The charging hubs and standalone stations will be equipped with 60-120kW power charge points capable of hosting an average of 20-50 vehicles each, and will be open to the general public.

China aims to be "carbon neutral" by 2060, and its domestic EV industry has maintained rapid growth since the second half of 2020. This growth in China's EV industry has raised demand for metals used in batteries such as cobalt, nickel and lithium.

The electricity for this new network will be produced mostly from renewable sources, in line with both partners' respective goals for carbon neutrality.

"This partnership with CTG opens new doors to TotalEnergies for a long term and widened cooperation with a leader of China's electric energy," said Alexis Vovk, president of marketing and services at TotalEnergies.

"New energy vehicles' charging is an important part of new infrastructures' construction," said Jin Heping, chief information officer of CTG, which is also a major hydropower producer globally. "Through the cooperation with TotalEnergies, we would like to extend our upstream expertise in clean power generation and power supply to the downstream retail and mobility services business, while creating at the same time a model of technological innovation in the field of new energy vehicle charging," he added.

This is TotalEnergies' second such development in Asia. It bought Singapore's dominant EV charging network earlier this year, in line with its plans for a major expansion of its operations in the sector in coming years. It set a target last year to have 150,000 EV charge points by 2025, up from 18,000 in 2020, as part of a business transformation in line with plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

By Prethika Nair