China gears up for hydrogen's immense potential

[Caribbeans]

A hydrogen heavy-duty truck attracts visitors at an expo in Beijing. (DU JIANPO/FOR CHINA DAILY)

China gears up for hydrogen's immense potential

China Daily | 2025-05-03

China's green hydrogen sector is on the cusp of rapid development, potentially blossoming into a 12 trillion yuan ($1.64 trillion) emerging industry as the country strategically prioritizes hydrogen as a cornerstone of its future energy system, according to industry experts and company executives.

Driven by ambitious decarbonization goals and strong government backing, hydrogen is projected to become a major component of China's end-use energy mix, complementing electricity and fostering a vast new industrial landscape, they say.

Analysts conservatively estimate hydrogen will account for approximately 10 percent of China's terminal energy system by 2050, rising to around 15 percent by 2060, solidifying its position as a crucial element in the nation's energy strategy.

This integration into the terminal energy system, working in tandem with electricity, is expected to transform hydrogen into a primary energy consumer, propelling the growth of a massive, multi-trillion yuan industry, said Gan Yong, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, during the China International Hydrogen Congress 2025 held in Beijing in March.

Infrastructure development is already accelerating. By June 2024, China had constructed 426 hydrogen refueling stations. The deployment of fuel cell vehicles is also gaining momentum, with cumulative adoption exceeding 20,000 vehicles by the end of last year and continuing to climb rapidly...more
https://m.chinanews.com/wap/detail/ecnszw/heqztpw7829959.shtml

[NNadir]

1. The "potential" is to waste the energy in coal to make an intractable and dangerous fuel. Chinese hydrogen is filthy.

Once again, as is often the case when fossil fuel sales people come here with slick video to greenwash their product as "green:"

Subsidizing Grid-Based Electrolytic Hydrogen Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Coal Dominated Power Systems Liqun Peng, Yang Guo, Shangwei Liu, Gang He, and Denise L. Mauzerall Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (12), 5187-5195

The text is clear enough.

From the introductory text:

... Currently, nearly all hydrogen in China is either produced directly from fossil fuels (55% from coal gasification and 14% from steam methane reforming (SMR)) or as a byproduct of petroleum refining (28%), with only 1% coming from water electrolysis. (2) Producing 1 kg of coal- or SMR-based hydrogen emits roughly 19 and 10 kg of CO2, respectively. (3) In 2020, hydrogen production from fossil fuels in China emitted approximately 322Tg of CO2, equivalent to 25% of total CO2 emissions from industrial processes, a number expected to rise with increasing hydrogen demand. (4) Industrial processes include production of nonmetallic mineral products, chemical, and metal products, as well as production and consumption of halocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. (4)

.

The bold, italics and underlining is mine.

EST: Chinese Hydrogen Production Is Making Climate Change Worse.