China gears up for hydrogen's immense potential

[Caribbeans]

Huge Chinese Electolyzer on display during an industry expo held in March in Beijing. CHEN XIAOGEN

China gears up for hydrogen's immense potential

ZHENG XIN | 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...snip

...By the end of last year, China's installed photovoltaic capacity reached 886 million kilowatts, a 45 percent year-on-year increase. PV power now constitutes 24.8 percent of total installed capacity, surpassing wind and hydro to become China's second-largest power source....more
https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202505/03/WS68157097a310a04af22bd522.html

"Useless Junk" ???

China's father of Electric Cars Mr. Wan Gang: Hydrogen is next big push for Chinese Gov (2020)

Around the same time as fElon Muck was crashing his uninsured McLaren sports car, Mr. Wan Gang was trying to convince the Chinese Government that electric cars were the future. And he did.

[NNadir]

1. Chinese production of hydrogen exacerbates extreme global heating: It's filthy.

Every time the fossil fuel greenwashing advertising shows up here, I can routinely "gear up" to point out that it's anti-environmental bullshit by appeal to the scientific literature, specifically this piece:

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)

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The bold, italics and underlining is mine.

EST: Chinese Hydrogen Production Is Making Climate Change Worse.

The concept of "green hydrogen" is a fucking lie, no matter how many times it's advertised here with slick ads. It's a Trumpian scale demonstration of dishonesty.