At the critical juncture of energy transition, hydrogen energy, with its clean, efficient, and renewable characteristics, is gradually becoming an important component of the new energy system and one of the important directions for the development of new quality productive forces.

What is the overall development stage of China's hydrogen energy industry at present? What are the current development priorities and hotspots? When will the industry enter the explosive growth period in the future? ... With these questions in mind, the reporter conducted an exclusive interview with Jiang Ning, former chief expert of Sinopec Sales Company and deputy secretary-general of the Hydrogen Energy Association of the China Industrial Development Promotion Association.

Hydrogen energy is emerging in the transportation field

"If we regard the development of China's hydrogen energy industry as a process from a small seed to a thriving tree, then the hydrogen energy industry is in a stage of rapid 'germination' and rapid development," Jiang said.

Jiang Ning said that China's energy structure has long been dominated by coal, with a significant proportion of coal in primary energy consumption and a high dependence on overseas energy such as oil and gas. Hydrogen energy is a secondary energy source that is abundant, green, low-carbon, and widely used, which is of great significance for building a clean, low-carbon, safe, and efficient energy system and achieving the goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. China's rich wind, solar, and hydro resources provide favorable conditions for the development of hydrogen energy.

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"Previously, the social perception of hydrogen was mainly as a chemical raw material, and some people even associated hydrogen with hydrogen bombs. In recent years, hydrogen has been recognized as an energy source, and technical, economic, policy, and social perceptions are accumulating strength," Jiang Ning said.

The "Medium and Long-Term Plan for Hydrogen Energy Industry Development (2021-2035)" clarifies the energy attributes of hydrogen. It mentions that hydrogen energy is an important component of the future national new energy system, an important carrier for green and low-carbon transformation at the energy consumption terminal, and a key direction for the development of strategic emerging industries and future industries. In his view, this provides strong policy support for the development of the hydrogen energy industry, and hydrogen energy has begun to be applied in more fields.

Hydrogen-powered urban trains have been successfully tested and put into commercial operation, commercial hydrogen-powered commuter vehicles have been officially delivered, and hydrogen-electric hybrid artificial intelligence transportation robots have been successfully launched... The transportation field is a key link in the application of hydrogen energy.

"From the perspective of application scenarios, hydrogen energy is gradually emerging in the transportation field," Jiang Ning said. In April and August of this year, Sinopec successfully held two exploration actions of the Beijing-Shanghai hydrogen energy corridor, which is the actual transportation test of large-scale, long-distance, and cross-regional hydrogen energy vehicles in China. It marks the preliminary opening of the Beijing-Shanghai hydrogen energy transportation corridor, which is also the longest hydrogen energy corridor in the country at present. The vehicle only needs to refuel with hydrogen for a few tens of minutes during the journey, and the driving range is more than 500km, which shows that hydrogen energy transportation has a certain foundation in commercial applications.

Jiang Ning said that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, China will carry out hydrogen energy transportation demonstration projects in five key city clusters, with the goal of promoting 50,000 hydrogen energy vehicles during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. As of July this year, 21,500 vehicles have been completed, and there is still a large development space in the next year and a half.More critically, with breakthroughs in key core technologies and industrial progress, the prices of hydrogen fuel cells and systems, as well as hydrogen storage tanks, have gradually decreased. He explained that taking a 49-ton hydrogen-powered heavy truck as an example, its system cost has dropped from 10,000 yuan/kilowatt before 2018 to about 2,000 to 3,000 yuan/kilowatt now. In the future, if production capacity reaches a certain scale, the cost is expected to fall below 1,000 yuan/kilowatt. At that time, in terms of life cycle costs, hydrogen will have the competitiveness to rival internal combustion engine vehicles in the transportation sector.

Additionally, the construction of hydrogen refueling stations has made significant progress. The national standard "Technical Code for Vehicle Refueling, Gas Refilling, and Hydrogen Refueling Stations" (GB 50156-2021) has been promulgated and implemented, revising the original standards for refueling and gas refilling stations into standards for combined oil, gas, and hydrogen stations, greatly facilitating the construction process of hydrogen refueling stations. The construction cost of hydrogen refueling stations has also decreased significantly. During the Winter Olympics, the equipment cost for a hydrogen refueling station was about 15 million yuan, which has been reduced to 7 million yuan by 2023, and it is expected to drop to five to six million yuan this year.

The downward trend in hydrogen prices is equally evident. The early domestic hydrogen prices were expensive, once reaching about 70 to 90 yuan/kg, and now the terminal selling price of hydrogen has been reduced to about 40 to 60 yuan/kg. In pilot city clusters, with policy support, the terminal selling price of hydrogen must not exceed 25 yuan/kg.

Jiang Ning estimates that by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan" and during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the hydrogen energy industry will gain certain momentum. In the future, hydrogen energy will coexist with refined oil, natural gas, electricity, biomass energy, and others in different application scenarios, playing a positive role in China's energy security and green transformation.

Opportunities and challenges coexist, and the development of hydrogen energy is a long and arduous task.

Currently, the development of the hydrogen energy industry still requires policy support to "help it onto the horse and send it on its way." How to achieve self-sustaining profitability for the industry remains a significant issue facing the hydrogen energy sector.

Jiang Ning introduced that, in fact, in large-scale mining, ports, industrial parks, and other application scenarios and regional industries, the economic benefits of hydrogen energy have begun to be realized, and hydrogen energy applications have started to achieve self-sustaining profitability.

At present, many steel companies are venturing into hydrogen energy. Under the "dual carbon" goal, hydrogen energy, as an efficient and clean green energy source, is very suitable for the energy-saving and carbon-reduction needs of steel companies through hydrogen metallurgy, which replaces carbon with hydrogen to reduce iron ore. In addition, hydrogen-powered heavy trucks can also be applied to logistics scenarios in the steel industry. The coke oven gas released during the coking process of steel companies is rich in hydrogen and is relatively inexpensive, at about 12 yuan per kilogram, which can achieve cost balance.

In some regions rich in wind and solar resources and with lower electricity prices, using wind and photovoltaic electrolysis to produce hydrogen can solve the problem of abandoned wind and solar energy, and using hydrogen vehicles for transportation operations can also achieve a balance of income and expenditure or even profitability throughout the life cycle.

"Once a balance of income and expenditure is achieved, hydrogen energy can be easily accepted and applied," Jiang Ning said. However, overall profitability still requires technological progress and further cost reduction. When the life cycle cost is comparable to that of diesel and gasoline, the advantages of hydrogen energy can be fully realized.When discussing the challenges faced by the development of the hydrogen energy industry, Jiang Ning candidly pointed out that the industrial layout needs further optimization, and technical bottlenecks still need to be broken through.

"Some places blindly pursue a large and comprehensive industrial layout without combining their own advantages, leading to resource waste and low efficiency," Jiang Ning said frankly. He noted that some places pursue the development of the entire industrial chain, which leads to some companies extending their factories merely to obtain policy preferences. For example, in the future, it is necessary to guide localities to reasonably layout the hydrogen energy industry in combination with their own resource endowments, application scenarios, and policy conditions to improve the overall efficiency of the industry.

"In fact, it is very meaningful to choose a certain segment or category in the hydrogen energy industry chain for development based on local production and scientific research advantages. For instance, the Yiwu small commodity market focuses on the small commodity field and has become the largest in the world, and this experience should be learned from," Jiang Ning said by way of example. For example, Zibo in Shandong has focused on developing hydrogen fuel cell membranes, seizing the high point of development.

At the same time, although some key technologies have made progress, there are still technical bottlenecks in some areas that need to strengthen technical research and innovation. Taking long-distance pipeline technology as an example, there are still many technical problems in the design and manufacturing of pipelines, valves, pumps, and other related equipment in high-pressure, large-flow pure hydrogen environments. This requires further increasing R&D investment, concentrating efforts to break through technical bottlenecks, and thus effectively promoting industrial development.

"For example, high-pressure hydrogen-containing valves, because hydrogen gas needs a high-pressure environment, there are very few domestic companies doing this field, involving a series of issues such as materials and processing precision, and there is a great market potential," he added.

The hydrogen energy industry, as one of the key development directions of China's emerging industries and future industries, is also one of the important directions for developing new quality productive forces. In Jiang Ning's view, the hydrogen energy industry is advancing key technological progress with pragmatic actions, accelerating the linkage of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and releasing industrial vitality, continuously adding more "hydrogen" power to the development of new quality productive forces.