We use electricity every day without thinking twice about it. We charge our phones, turn on lights, drive cars, and run entire cities on it. But how often do we stop and ask a simple question: where does all this energy actually come from—and where does it end up?
In September 2025, two young volunteers from New Zealand travelled to Xinyu City in Jiangxi Province, China, as part of a three-month volunteer programme. What they discovered there gave them a front-row seat to one of the biggest technological shifts happening in the world right now: the rise of clean energy and electric transport.
In Xinyu, electric vehicles aren’t a novelty. They’re part of everyday life. Streets are filled with quiet, battery-powered cars, buses, and scooters—each one running on lithium batteries. That simple fact sparked a big question: what actually happens to a kilowatt-hour of electricity once it’s stored inside a battery?
To find the answer, the volunteers visited Jiangxi Luda New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., where engineers walked them through the heart of modern battery technology: the anode material. Often described as the “core” of a lithium-ion battery, this is where energy is safely stored at a microscopic level, inside a carefully engineered carbon lattice structure. It’s invisible to the naked eye—but it’s the reason electric vehicles and energy storage systems work at all.
Seeing this process up close gave the volunteers a rare insight into the technology driving the global energy transition. This wasn’t just theory from a textbook—it was real engineering, real manufacturing, and real solutions to real-world problems.
They then took their learning one step further with a visit to JMC Group’s New Energy Vehicle manufacturing plant. Here, highly automated production lines and digital control systems assemble electric vehicles at scale. Staff explained how these vehicles reduce CO₂ emissions and help cut dependence on fossil fuels—one of the key challenges facing every country, including New Zealand.
But the most important part of the journey didn’t happen in a factory.
Back in the classroom, the volunteers turned what they had seen into engaging, practical lessons for their students. Instead of abstract ideas about “clean energy” or “sustainability”, students were learning about real technologies, real factories, and real solutions already being used today.
This is how the next generation of innovators is formed: by connecting cutting-edge technology to curious minds. By turning wonder into understanding. And by showing young people that the future of energy, engineering, and environmental responsibility isn’t something far away—it’s already being built, right now.
And one day, they might be the ones building it.
