The global energy system is undergoing a significant transformation towards decarbonization and intelligent restructuring. In this context, hydrogen energy, as an efficient secondary energy carrier, is seeing its strategic importance grow increasingly prominent. Renewable hydrogen, in particular, not only offers flexible and efficient energy storage and peak-shaving solutions for renewable energy sources, ensuring the large-scale integration of variable power sources like wind and solar, but also serves as a crucial tool for achieving deep decarbonization in key sectors such as industry, transportation, and construction. It is becoming a key force supporting the cleaning and low-carbon transition of the energy system.
This year marks the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Following the conclusion of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference sessions, the hydrogen energy industry has received clearer policy signals. This year's Government Work Report and the 15th Five-Year Plan have explicitly identified it as a "new growth point to cultivate" and a "future industry." On March 16, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Finance, and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued a notice on carrying out pilot projects for the comprehensive application of hydrogen energy. This provides further strong momentum for the large-scale application and commercialization of hydrogen energy during the 15th Five-Year Plan period and clearly outlines the direction of strengthening the application of renewable hydrogen. With increasing policy support, China's hydrogen energy industry, especially the renewable hydrogen sector, is expected to accelerate into a new phase of "large-scale application and commercial development."
In recent years, the development of renewable hydrogen in China has been remarkable. According to data from the National Energy Administration, China's hydrogen production is projected to exceed 37 million tons by 2025, maintaining its position as the world's largest producer. The cumulative capacity for hydrogen production from renewable sources has already surpassed 250,000 tons per year, achieving a doubling growth compared to the previous year, which is encouraging. However, alongside the rapidly growing production capacity, the development of China's renewable hydrogen industry also faces numerous challenges. These include high costs, the geographical mismatch between the production and utilization of renewable hydrogen, and the need for improvement in standards and regulatory systems. Behind these issues, hydrogen storage and transportation, as the critical link connecting supply and demand, is one of the key constraints on the development of renewable hydrogen. It can be said that for the renewable hydrogen industry to continue its rapid development, the storage and transportation problem must be resolved effectively. In this regard, the following analysis and recommendations are proposed:
Storage and transportation costs present a significant constraint, necessitating a strong push for the local utilization of renewable hydrogen. The production cost of renewable hydrogen is already relatively high. When combined with the high storage and transportation costs resulting from the supply-demand mismatch, the final cost of hydrogen for end-users is further increased, hindering hard-to-abate sectors from achieving decarbonization through renewable hydrogen. Due to the combination of multiple factors, storage and transportation costs often account for more than 30% of the final hydrogen price, significantly raising the barrier to the application of hydrogen energy in sectors like transportation and industry.
Therefore, fundamentally reducing the need for long-distance hydrogen transportation and promoting the local utilization of renewable hydrogen is an important pathway to reducing systemic costs and driving large-scale development. Some companies have already begun exploring this avenue. For instance, the China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation Xinjiang Kuqa Green Hydrogen Demonstration Project utilizes abundant local solar resources for direct hydrogen production. The green hydrogen produced is transported via short-distance pipelines within the industrial park to surrounding refining and chemical facilities, where it is used in processes like hydrotreating and hydrocracking, replacing traditional gray hydrogen produced from fossil fuels. This achieves integrated utilization from "green power to hydrogen" to "hydrogen use in refining."
Furthermore, the 15th Five-Year Plan mentions "orderly promoting the relocation of eligible energy-intensive industries to regions rich in renewable energy resources," which will create new opportunities for the local consumption of hydrogen energy. Energy-intensive industries, such as steel and chemicals, are typical hard-to-abate sectors. Their deep decarbonization, beyond electrification substitution, must rely on clean energy carriers like green hydrogen. This trend of industrial relocation essentially creates a clear consumption scenario for the abundant green power and green hydrogen resources in the northern and western regions of China. In the future, integrated projects like "renewable energy-hydrogen-ammonia/methanol" can be further promoted in these regions. This involves converting green hydrogen into hydrogen-based derivatives like synthetic ammonia or methanol near the production site, enabling local consumption, reducing long-distance transportation costs, leveraging existing mature chemical storage and transportation systems, expanding application scenarios for hydrogen energy, and providing new pathways for low-carbon substitution in the industrial and energy sectors. This approach can fundamentally resolve the supply-demand mismatch issue where "hydrogen is produced but cannot be used, and users cannot buy hydrogen," while also avoiding the cost problems associated with cross-regional hydrogen transportation, thereby improving the overall economics and scale of the hydrogen industry.
Emerging storage and transportation forms present challenges, urgently requiring the improvement of relevant standards and regulatory systems. As most emerging hydrogen storage and transportation technologies are still in the development stage, the related standards and regulatory systems are not yet fully established. This, to some extent, restricts the cross-regional flow of hydrogen and the large-scale development of the industry, particularly hindering the optimal allocation and efficient utilization of renewable hydrogen.
Regarding standards, because hydrogen storage and transportation technology pathways have not yet stabilized, the related technical standard system is relatively fragmented, with some gaps or outdated standards. For example, in areas such as long-distance hydrogen pipelines, organic liquid hydrogen storage, and key equipment and materials for hydrogen storage, there are currently only group standards or local regulations, lacking unified national standards. It is recommended that in these areas where standards are not yet robust, industry-university-research collaborative working groups be established to prioritize standard development and create a linkage mechanism involving "technology pre-research, standard initiation, and rapid revision." Simultaneously, group standards or enterprise standards should be encouraged to continuously improve through practice and gradually be converted into national or industry standards.
In terms of regulation, hydrogen storage and transportation projects involve multiple regulatory domains such as energy, chemicals, and transportation. Particularly in segments like long-distance pipelines, road transport of liquid hydrogen, and the cross-domain storage and transportation of hydrogen derivatives like liquid ammonia/methanol, there are issues with unclear responsibility boundaries. Some projects face complex approval processes, high coordination costs in operation management, leading to slow project advancement. To address this, policymakers should start from the top-level design, systematically improve the comprehensive regulatory system for hydrogen energy, and promote the establishment of cross-departmental collaborative regulatory mechanisms.
Hydrogen is an indirect greenhouse gas, necessitating strengthened emission management across the entire industry chain, including storage and transportation. A rarely mentioned but critically important issue in the hydrogen industry is that hydrogen itself is an indirect greenhouse gas. Hydrogen emissions not only pose safety risks but also have climate impacts, and the storage and transportation segment is a part of hydrogen emissions that cannot be ignored. Research indicates that hydrogen has a global warming potential approximately 37 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year timeframe, and still 12 times over a 100-year timeframe. This means that if emission management across the entire hydrogen industry chain, including storage and transportation, is inadequate, the emission reduction benefits of renewable hydrogen will be diminished. Precisely for this reason, the issue of hydrogen emissions is gradually entering the international policy arena. Regions like the European Union have begun to focus on its climate impact and are considering gradually incorporating hydrogen emissions into the full life-cycle carbon footprint assessment system for hydrogen energy.
As a key segment for hydrogen emissions, hydrogen storage and transportation needs to gradually strengthen emission management from three aspects: technology, monitoring, and management.
First, starting with equipment design and material research and development. For example, focusing on breakthroughs in hydrogen embrittlement-resistant materials, high-efficiency sealing technologies, and the safety design of hydrogen pipelines and storage equipment to enhance the stability of equipment under high pressure and long-term operation conditions. Although these measures often require high upfront investment, from a full life-cycle perspective, they help significantly reduce safety and emission risks.
Introducing hydrogen emission monitoring methods is also very important. For instance, deploying high-sensitivity sensors to achieve timely identification and response to abnormal leaks. Considering that the cost of monitoring equipment and technological maturity are still improving, such measures can be piloted first and implemented in phases, continuously enhancing the safety and emission reduction benefits of the entire hydrogen chain at a controllable cost.
On this basis, optimizing operational management can further reduce unnecessary emissions, promoting a set of operable, relatively cost-controllable emission reduction measures in the storage and transportation segment. For example, optimizing venting and purging procedures during the loading/unloading of tube trailers and the maintenance of pipeline equipment, and exploring hydrogen recovery and reuse solutions. Simultaneously, establishing standardized Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) systems for key sealing points in the storage and transportation segment. Such practices have mature experience in the oil and gas industry, offering strong reference value and a foundation for implementation.
Looking ahead to the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China's hydrogen energy industry is on the verge of acceleration, with particularly broad prospects for the production and utilization of renewable hydrogen. In this process, breaking through the bottlenecks in the storage and transportation segment will be a key factor in enabling hydrogen energy to truly contribute to the deep decarbonization of hard-to-abate industries and achieve industrial scale and commercialization. Overcoming the storage and transportation bottleneck is not merely a technical challenge but a systematic project involving industrial layout, standards and regulatory systems, and maximizing climate benefits. Only through multi-stakeholder collaboration and the formation of a sound industrial ecosystem can hydrogen energy play a more important role in the low-carbon transition of China's energy system.