On November 24, the GFIC 2025 "Green & Smart Future" Sustainable Development Global Challenge finals and award ceremony, jointly organized by Vertex China and Temasek Foundation, successfully concluded in Shenzhen. Since its launch, this year's competition has attracted over 1,000 innovative proposals from 70 countries and regions, covering fields such as clean energy, circular materials, and climate technology. After rigorous preliminary and semi-final evaluations, the top 10 teams advanced to the finals. With its technological breakthroughs and commercialization potential in long-duration energy storage, ZH Energy "High-Safety Low-Cost Iron-Sulfur Flow Battery" project was awarded the Elite Award and received 1 million Chinese yuan in pilot funding, emerging as one of the most spotlighted technologies in this year's competition.

As a global sustainable technology challenge, GFIC brings together core forces from international capital and industry. The organizers, Vertex China and Temasek Foundation, both belong to the Temasek ecosystem, boasting extensive experience in global tech investment and green industry layout, with a focus on identifying climate tech innovations that have large-scale potential and long-term impact. The GFIC2025 evaluation framework prioritizes technology maturity, commercial viability, and China localization value; ZH Energy ultimately stood out, demonstrating the certainty of its technical route, engineering capabilities, and high growth potential from the perspective of international capital. This further proves that iron-sulfur flow batteries are becoming a new focus of global capital and industry partners in long-duration energy storage.

The iron-sulfur flow battery is a new long-duration energy storage system that ZH Energy is prioritizing. Its active system is built from materials with high earth abundance, low cost, and high safety (sulfur and iron), giving it significant advantages in terms of safety, raw material availability, and lifecycle cost. In response to the long-duration regulation needs brought by the high penetration of renewable energy, the iron-sulfur flow battery provides a new pathway that combines economic efficiency and safety. Over the past year, ZH Energy has made multiple breakthroughs in key materials, stack structure, electrolyte systems, and system engineering, advancing the technology from lab validation to engineering implementation. The company has collaborated with State Grid, Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute, and other central enterprises and leading energy institutions to launch demonstration projects, laying a solid foundation for the commercial validation of the iron-sulfur system.

State Grid Iron-sulfur Project

Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute Iron-sulfur Project

Winning the GFIC2025 Elite Award and Pilot Grant will further accelerate ZH Energy progress in commercializing iron-sulfur flow batteries across multiple scenarios. By leveraging GFIC’s resource connections in industry and capital, it will create more cooperation opportunities for the industrialization and scaling of the technology. Looking ahead, long-duration energy storage is a key foundation for the new power system, and the iron-sulfur flow battery, which features safety, low cost, long lifespan, and resource-friendliness, is demonstrating its potential to become the next-generation mainstream energy storage technology.

As global renewable energy develops rapidly and demand for long-duration energy storage grows, ZH Energy will continue to advance the global deployment of iron-sulfur technology. Relying on its existing international partner network and sound industrial ecosystem, it will accelerate technology implementation and global promotion. ZH Energy will work with industry partners to expand the application of iron-sulfur flow batteries, support the building of a global sustainable energy system, and contribute more competitive green innovation to the long-term vision of "Green Intelligence Future."