China’s top economic planner yesterday announced a target to produce up to 200,000 tonnes per year of green hydrogen, a zero-carbon fuel generated from renewable energy sources, by 2025, but envisions a more widespread industry over the long term.
The country aims to produce 100,000 tonnes to 200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year and have about 50,000 hydrogen-fueled vehicles by 2025, the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement.
China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has been striving to balance energy security and achieve its climate change goals, and is focusing on hydrogen to reduce carbon emissions from its transportation and industrial sectors.
Green hydrogen is gas produced by using renewable energy sources to break down water in electrolysis, which results in lower carbon emissions than when producing hydrogen by using natural gas or coal.
“Development of hydrogen is an important move for energy transition and a great support for China’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals,” Wang Xiang (王翔), deputy director of the NDRC’s High Technology Department, told a news conference.
China produces 33 million tonnes of hydrogen a year, with about 80 percent of hydrogen coming from coal and natural gas, and the rest mainly a by-product from industrial sectors, government data showed.
The country produced 500,000 tonnes of hydrogen from water electrolysis in 2019, data from the China Hydrogen Alliance, an industrial association, showed.
Wang said that even though most of China’s hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, the potential of green hydrogen is huge as the country has the world’s largest renewable power capacity.
The NDRC statement said that China aims to establish a complete hydrogen industry covering transportation, energy storage and industrial sectors, and to “significantly improve” the portion of green hydrogen in China’s energy consumption by 2035.
The China Hydrogen Alliance estimates that the country’s hydrogen demand would reach 35 million tonnes per year by 2030, from 20 million tonnes this year, and reach 60 million tonnes by 2050.
Hydrogen can be used in fuel cells and in internal combustion engines.
High production costs are one of the major obstacles impeding hydrogen development.
Analysts estimate that hydrogen prices would need to halve to compete with gasoline and diesel.
The NDRC called for a rational layout of hydrogen projects based on resources and market demand to avoid disorderly competition.
“Local government will be strictly forbidden to blindly follow the trend of hydrogen project construction and will be prevented from building low-end projects to avoid the waste of resources,” Wang said.
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