At present, the installed capacity of renewable energy in China ranks first in the world, and the development potential of green hydrogen industry is huge. Making green hydrogen from green electricity has become the industry consensus for the sustainable development of hydrogen energy industry. However, at present, green hydrogen production capacity only accounts for 4% of the total hydrogen production capacity. China's green hydrogen development still has a series of problems such as cost, technology and safety to be solved.
Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development and the Ministry of Water Resources jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Deeply Promoting the Green Development of Industries in the Yellow River Valley, proposing to orderly promote green hydrogen production in Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Henan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Ningxia and other provinces and regions, accelerate the reduction and substitution of coal, and prudently and orderly layout the demonstration projects of hydrogen energy industrialization, Promote the coupling development of renewable energy hydrogen production and modern coal chemical industry in Ningdong.
At present, the installed capacity of renewable energy in China ranks first in the world, and the development potential of green hydrogen industry is huge. Making green hydrogen from green electricity has become the industry consensus for the sustainable development of hydrogen energy industry. However, at present, green hydrogen production capacity only accounts for 4% of the total hydrogen production capacity. China's green hydrogen development still has a series of problems such as cost, technology and safety to be solved.
Facing three challenges of energy efficiency, safety and technology
In March 2022, China issued the Medium and Long term Plan for the Development of the Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035), which clarifies the strategic positioning of hydrogen energy, emphasizes that the development of hydrogen energy must adhere to the principle of clean and low-carbon, focuses on the development of hydrogen production from renewable energy, and strictly controls hydrogen production from fossil energy. Green hydrogen has become the only way for the development of hydrogen energy in China.
It should be noted that the transition of application scenarios will lead to the transition from hydrogen to electricity hydrogen coupling. Ying Yuan, Marketing Director of Sungrow Hydrogen Energy Technology Co., Ltd., pointed out at the Second China Japan South Korea Hydrogen Energy Industry Summit Forum that from grid power, constant power, small-scale to large-scale hydrogen production from multiple renewable energies, how to transform irregular electricity into safe and stable hydrogen energy will continue to challenge the industry.
"At present, green hydrogen mainly comes from green electricity. Since the energy efficiency of electricity hydrogen conversion is lower than that of electricity electricity conversion, from the perspective of energy efficiency, we should adhere to the principle of electricity first, hydrogen electricity integration, reduction of conversion, and economic security, and solve the carbon reduction problem that is difficult to solve by supporting long-term stable energy supply through hydrogen electricity complementarity." said Jiang Lijun, the chief expert of Youyan Technology Group.
On the basis of dealing with the relationship between electricity and hydrogen, we must further solve the problem of hydrogen energy itself. "At present, the application of green hydrogen faces three challenges: high cost and low efficiency, high security risk, and the core technology and equipment still have a bottleneck." Jiang Lijun pointed out that in order to accelerate the development of green hydrogen, countries have also put forward their own green hydrogen cost goals. If the United States hopes to reduce the production cost of green hydrogen to $1/kg within 10 years, Australia hopes to control the production cost of green hydrogen at $2/kg, and China hopes to control the production cost of green hydrogen at $13/kg by 2030.
Experts attending the meeting pointed out that it is noteworthy that China has made some exploration in the application of green hydrogen this year, mainly in chemical industry, distributed power generation and hydrogen refueling stations, but it is still in the initial stage. "From the perspective of technology, short-term demonstration, key equipment, parts and system integration technology still lacks long-term assessment. From the perspective of technical and economic analysis, the operation time is short, data accumulation is little, and technical and economic analysis lacks the support of actual data."
Four cost reduction measures are indispensable
In the opinion of the above experts, four measures should be taken to reduce the cost of green hydrogen: policy support, scenario selection, scale application and technological progress. "At the initial stage of hydrogen energy development, these four measures must be carried out simultaneously and mutually to effectively reduce the cost of green hydrogen."
At the initial stage of development, policy support is particularly important. The first is low electricity price. Taking Guangdong Province as an example, the Action Plan of Guangdong Province to Accelerate the Construction of Fuel Cell Vehicle Demonstration City Clusters (2022-2025) took the lead in proposing to allow hydrogen production in hydrogen refueling stations, implement the electricity price of special hydrogen generation stations for fuel cell vehicles, and implement the cold storage electricity price policy. The minimum electricity price can reach 0.17 yuan/kWh. The Measures of Shenzhen on Promoting the High Quality Development of Green and Low Carbon Industries (Draft for Comments) and other measures issued by Shenzhen this year further proposed that in addition to the electricity price of cold storage, when the proportion of electrolytic hydrogen valley electricity exceeds 50%, the basic electricity charge can be exempted.
Jiang Lijun pointed out that low electricity prices can provide important support for the competitiveness of green hydrogen. It is estimated that when the electricity price is 0.26 yuan/kWh, the cost of hydrogen production from electrolytic water can compete with that from natural gas; When the electricity price reaches 0.13 yuan/kWh, the cost can compete with that of hydrogen production from coal.
In terms of tax deduction, Jiang Lijun took the United States as an example and said that the United States proposed in the Inflation Reduction Act this year to implement a tax deduction of $3 per kg of green hydrogen. After the deduction, the price of green hydrogen in the United States could be reduced to $0.73/kg, which may be the cheapest green hydrogen in the world. At the same time, it should be combined with carbon tax to further improve the competitiveness of green hydrogen.
The selection of green hydrogen application scenarios is equally important. China's hydrogen energy planning is clear, and the principle of nearby utilization should be adhered to before 2025. "From a comprehensive perspective, in the near future, the source side electricity hydrogen coordinated local utilization mode should be adopted to use hydrogen in a diversified way to improve economic competitiveness and energy efficiency; the receiver side electricity hydrogen coordinated mode should be adopted to develop the distributed energy system. This can make full use of the low electricity price at the source side and the valley electricity at the receiver side to support, so as to effectively reduce the operating cost of green hydrogen." Jiang Lijun said.
International trade will open a new prospect for green hydrogen
In addition to focusing on the problems of green hydrogen industry itself, expanding the international market of green hydrogen will also further benefit the large-scale development of green hydrogen. Mao Zongqiang, vice chairman of the International Association of Hydrogen Energy and professor of Tsinghua University, said that, generally speaking, we often describe China's energy resource endowment as "rich in coal, short of oil and gas", but from the perspective of renewable energy, China is rich in renewable energy, so it also has the characteristics of "more hydrogen".
Some experts said that, from the national level, the construction of China's national hydrogen energy policy framework has been preliminarily completed. Through top-level design, demonstration application subsidies and local industrial planning, the coordinated development of the entire industrial chain has been jointly promoted. "In recent years, China's coastal areas have made great efforts to develop offshore wind power. In combination with the developed transportation network in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, green transportation and green international trade industries can be formed. In the north of China and the west of northwest China, there are unique scenery resources. A perfect industrial structure chain is formed by combining hydrogen production from scenery with traditional chemicals."
Specifically, there are about 2.6 million square kilometers of desertification land in northwest China. These regions are the foundation for the development of renewable energy. The desert and Gobi Desert in China cover an area of 1.28 million square kilometers. According to the current technology, 128 billion kilowatts of photovoltaic power can be built in these deserts and adjacent areas. The developable sea area from the territorial sea line to the exclusive economic zone in China is about 600000 square kilometers, and the resource developable potential is about 2 billion kilowatts, accounting for about 75% of China's offshore wind power development potential.
"Green hydrogen trade will promote the upgrading of China's super large scale green hydrogen molding, storage, transportation and use technology industry, and also help China achieve the goal of carbon neutrality and meet the challenge of international carbon taxes." Mao Zongqiang pointed out that China should give full play to the geographical advantages of green hydrogen. The hydrogen produced in the east of China can be exported to Japan and South Korea, while the hydrogen produced in the west can be exported to Europe and transported by rail. At the same time, we should achieve both domestic and international circulation, strengthen international cooperation, and make full use of the "the Belt and Road" and other favorable policies.
