蕴藏万亿规模市场机遇 氢能应如何落地发展？Unlocking Trillion-Scale Market Opportunities: How Should Hydrogen Energy Be Deployed?

According to Green Fuel International Business Network, in the opening year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, a number of national special energy plans have been released one after another, and how hydrogen, new-type energy storage and electricity-computing synergy can be implemented has become a focus of industry attention. As an important part of the clean energy system, hydrogen is accelerating from policy-driven toward market-driven. On the industry front lines, a hydrogen heavy truck can refuel 37 kg of hydrogen at a time and travel more than 500 km on a single refueling, with hydrogen and oxygen reacting inside the vehicle to generate electricity and emitting only water; its clean, low-carbon and high energy density characteristics are becoming increasingly evident.

Storage and transportation were once a stumbling block holding back the hydrogen industry. The most mainstream 35 MPa hydrogen storage tanks on the market today hold internal pressure 350 times atmospheric pressure, equivalent to the water pressure at a seabed depth of 3,500 meters, with a single tank holding 11 kg of hydrogen; to carry more hydrogen, liquid hydrogen tanks are also being intensively developed by relevant companies. Although hydrogen carries a lot of energy, it is extremely light and can escape through tiny gaps, making storage and transportation more strenuous than oil or electricity—a bottleneck now being opened up at an accelerating pace.

Beyond storage, facilities for transporting hydrogen are also becoming increasingly complete. At present, China's first interprovincial, large-scale, long-distance pure hydrogen transmission pipeline—the "West Hydrogen to East" corridor—is being built at an accelerated pace, and the total length of hydrogen pipelines already built and planned nationwide has exceeded 13,000 kilometers. In the 15th Five-Year Plan for Building a New-Type Energy System, hydrogen transmission pipelines were included for the first time as a key national new-type energy infrastructure project, and in the next five years more hydrogen will reach households across the country.

Behind the change in status is a change in the industry. The China Hydrogen Development Report (2026) sets the tone for hydrogen development during the 15th Five-Year Plan: anchoring a "new stage of large-scale development" and moving from "policy-driven" to "market-driven". In Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu, hydrogen industry signed investment reached RMB 2.03 billion in the first half of the year, doubling last year's full-year figure in just six months; a local hydrogen-solar complementary smart microgrid is operating stably. China's annual hydrogen output exceeds 39 million tonnes, firmly ranking first in the world, and renewable hydrogen production capacity accounts for more than half of the global total.

Hydrogen applications are not limited to transportation and the power grid. In the canteen of a senior care institution in Weifang, Shandong, chefs are preparing meals over a flame blended with hydrogen, producing a bluer and cleaner flame. As application scenarios continue to expand, new hydrogen occupations have also emerged. Not long ago, two hydrogen-related occupations—"water electrolysis hydrogen production worker" and "hydrogen fuel cell manufacturing worker"—appeared on the list of new occupations published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, opening up new space for talent supply in the industry.

In Duolun County, Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, China's first wind and solar hydrogen production project is operating. Chen Yueqi, who worked in coal chemicals for more than a decade, transferred to become a water electrolysis hydrogen production worker; local green hydrogen capacity and output already account for a third of the national total, ranking first. Three higher vocational colleges in Inner Mongolia have opened hydrogen technology application programs, with more than 80% of students matching with key local industries. Zhang Lin, director of the Planning and Development Department of the China Electricity Council, said the next five years are a critical period for hydrogen to shift to "market-driven", with the rise of the entire industry chain of production, storage, transmission and use holding green transition and trillion-scale market opportunities.