Southwest China’s Guizhou Province has seen a robust expansion in the new-energy sector amid efforts to ramp up energy production and storage and promote green development, an industry report showed. In the first quarter of this year, the industrial output of Guizhou’s new-energy battery and material sector was about 20.38 billion yuan (about 2.83 billion U.S. dollars), according to the report from the Guizhou Institute of Industrial Development released during the ongoing two-day Eco Forum Global Guiyang 2023, scheduled until July 9 in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province. The figure surged 68.7 percent year on year, according to the report. It has predicted the annual industrial output of the sector to reach 100 billion yuan in 2023. Last year, the total industrial output of the sector in the province stood at 53.29 billion yuan, and the new-energy installed capacity exceeded 20 million kilowatts. With its phosphorite reserve ranking third in China, Guizhou has also shored up the development of the phosphorus chemical industry, which has played an important role in driving the growth of the new-energy battery and material sector, the report noted. It also projected that the annual production capacity of lithium iron phosphate material will reach 1.4 million tonnes in 2025, making the overall industrial chain supply capacity the third highest across the country.