Several places in China have been upgrading their transportation facilities, so as to promote the industry's green and low-carbon development.
Two months ago, central China's Hubei Province put its first expressway for hydrogen-powered vehicles into operation.
Mr. Wu, who has been working in logistics for over 20 years, has become one of drivers for the first 30 hydrogen-powered trucks in Hubei.
"It's quite comfortable sitting in a hydrogen-powered truck, which won't cause air pollution and runs with little noise. With just ten minutes' refueling, the tank will be full and can support a 300-kilometer run," Wu said.
Over the past two months, this expressway has handled more than 350 freight vehicles, with the daily volume of goods transported reaching 450 tons.
Comparing with the transport efficiency of fuel trucks on national and provincial highways, that of hydrogen-powered trucks on the expressways has increased by around 30 percent.
In Yantai City of east China's Shandong Province, the local transportation department is going to replace the power batteries of its new energy buses, since the battery life of those buses has significantly reduced after they have been in operation for seven years.
"A new 10.5-meter pure electric bus costs about 1.04 million yuan (about 144,000 U.S. dollars). However, if we only change its power battery, it only costs 130,000 to 150,000 yuan. Therefore, changing power batteries will greatly reduce the company's input," said Wang Xuewei, deputy Party chief of the Yantai Public Transportation Group.
After upgrading, the charging speed of those buses will increase by 33 percent.
"This year, we will transform 259 old pure electric buses to invigorate transport capacity. A total of 65 renewal projects involving ports and public transit will be pushed forward, to boost the green, low-carbon and circular development of the transport industry," said Sun Chengjun, deputy director of the Yantai Transportation Bureau.
China upgrades transportation facilities to boost green development
Seven categories of cutting-edge remote sensing innovations and a cloud-based open platform were unveiled at a press conference on Friday in Beijing, promising to enhance satellite data applications across a wide range of industries.
The event, themed "Quantitative Remote Sensing: Empowering Industries via the Cloud", was co-hosted by the National Engineering Research Center for Remote Sensing Satellite Applications, and the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIRI) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
It featured the release of 21 common quantitative remote sensing products spanning seven categories including vegetation ecology, water resources, soil, and atmospheric applications.
"Quantitative remote sensing products translate ground observations into measurable physical quantities. For example, crops supply food to humanity through photosynthesis, but how much do they actually produce? By using indicators such as leaf area index or evapotranspiration, we can quantify the solar energy absorbed, enabling detailed and precise analysis. It's fair to say that quantitative remote sensing is deeply connected to people's livelihoods, production, and social development," explained Zhang Bing, director of the National Engineering Research Center for Remote Sensing Satellite Applications.
The event also marked the launch of the GEOvis cloud-based open platform, jointly developed by the National Engineering Research Center for Remote Sensing Satellite Applications and GEOvis, a leading digital Earth technology provider in China.
The platform integrates the seven categories of quantitative remote sensing products into cloud-based services, significantly expanding application scenarios and unlocking potential across various industries.
"We aim to deliver high-quality, standardized common quantitative remote sensing products released today for the entire industry, with robust government support. By making these products directly accessible, we can lower the threshold of applications and enhance the overall performance of remote sensing satellite applications," said Wu Yirong, head of the AIRI, CAS.
Remote sensing innovations, cloud-based platform unveiled in Beijing
