Tech group Universal mCloud Corp (CVE:MCLD) has bolstered its senior management with a new president of Greater China to lead the advance of its business there.
Yan Zhao is a former chief financial officer of Changfeng Energy and began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
He will lead the firm's strategic initiatives in China and oversee the rollout of its blockchain technology designed to enhance energy data architecture in regulated utility markets.
"We are very pleased to have Yan join our team to lead us into China, the world's largest wind energy market, and to deploy blockchain technology within our AssetCare environment, initially for wind energy, where critical data of real-time energy production requires the highest standards of data integrity," said mCloud president Russ McMeekin.
China leads the market for wind energy, according to official data, and had wind capacity of 168.7 gigawatts at the end of 2016, and held a market share in new deployments of over 42%.
Sector consultant Wood Mackenzie predicts that China will average over 25 gigawatts of new wind capacity annually for the next decade, he added.
"We've recently announced a number of game-changing acquisitions that greatly enhance our core AssetCare wind technology for ultraprecise wind turbine analytics.
"Embedding blockchain functionality, combined with Yan's leadership and deep sector expertise, represents the next logical step in our plans," said McMeekin.
"I have been evaluating mCloud's technology position since late 2017. I have the benefit of numerous connections in the Chinese utility market and have conducted several customer needs assessments and market assessments with a very specific focus on wind energy," said Zhao.
"Wind energy, IoT, AI and blockchain are strategic initiatives for China right now. In fact, several of these initiatives are part of the Chinese government's 13-year plans and policies."
