When green hydrogen enters the 25-yuan era, it will be comparable to gasoline and diesel.

Ask AI · How will the breakthrough in green hydrogen costs change the transportation and energy landscape?

China News Service (CNS) March 28 (Song Yafen, intern Liu Nian) “Energy transition is not only a requirement to achieve carbon-emissions goals, but more importantly, it is about ensuring our country’s energy security.” On March 25, at the “2026 China Hydrogen Energy Expo and International Hydrogen Energy Conference” held in Beijing, Yu Zhuoping, director of the expert committee of the China Hydrogen Energy Alliance and a professor at Tongji University, made the above remarks during an interview with CNS.

Since the outbreak of the conflict in the Middle East, international oil prices have surged sharply, as the Strait of Hormuz—an oil-price transportation lifeline—has been almost cut off.

“If transportation is completely disrupted, oil prices will keep soaring and threaten a country’s energy security.” Yu Zhuoping said that our country recognized this problem long ago, carried out an energy transition, and accelerated the shift toward renewable energy such as wind power, solar power, and green hydrogen.

In the 2026 Government Work Report, hydrogen energy was written into the document for the first time and positioned as a “new growth point.” In Yu Zhuoping’s view, this sets the national strategic tone for the development of China’s hydrogen energy industry. And when hydrogen energy becomes a strategic national choice, it is both an inevitable move for China to address constraints stemming from its endowment of energy resources and to ensure energy security, and the core pathway to achieving the “dual carbon” goals.

Yu Zhuoping further explained that China’s resource endowment is rich in coal, but short of oil and natural gas. Energy security has always been a major challenge for our country. As a developing country, if we aim for development, we need to consume large amounts of energy.

After the “dual carbon” goals were established, the problem of how to coordinate the contradictions between the two has become even more prominent.

“Compared with Western countries, China has a shorter time window and greater challenges in achieving ‘carbon peaking and carbon neutrality,’ so during the process of推进 the ‘dual carbon’ goals, renewable energy is an area we must strongly promote. However, renewable energy such as wind power and photovoltaics has instability, which requires a carrier that can store and transport energy over long cycles and across regions. Hydrogen energy has therefore become the widely recognized best solution. That is why the state has planned and is implementing the construction of a new-type energy system of ‘wind, solar, and hydrogen’ as a national strategy.” Yu Zhuoping said.

Yu Zhuoping pointed out that China is a global leader in hydrogen production. China’s annual hydrogen output has already exceeded 30 million tons, but previously most hydrogen was produced through conversion from coal and petrochemical energy—what is called “gray hydrogen,” which costs only more than ten yuan per kilogram. Green hydrogen, by comparison, still has a relatively high cost, so market acceptance has been relatively low.

“The biggest challenge at present is the high cost across all links in production, storage, and transportation.” Yu Zhuoping said that to address this problem, our country is promoting the construction of energy bases and working to reduce costs in storage and transportation links by advancing storage and transportation through pipelines.

“Our western region relies on abundant wind and solar resources. The cost of manufacturing green hydrogen is already at a globally leading level, but local consumption capacity for green hydrogen is limited. So the current focus is to plan the construction of storage and transportation pipeline networks in the western region. Once a breakthrough is achieved, the price of green hydrogen can come down.” Yu Zhuoping said.

As energy, hydrogen is still an important development direction for the electrification of automobiles. China’s earliest commercial exploration of hydrogen energy also began in the transportation sector with fuel-cell vehicles. Yu Zhuoping explained that this is mainly because the green-hydrogen price that this industry can accept tends to be relatively higher.

Recently, three departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the “Notice on Carrying Out Pilot Projects for Comprehensive Applications of Hydrogen Energy,” proposed that by 2030, the average price of hydrogen used at the terminal end should be reduced to below 25 yuan per kilogram, striving to bring it down to around 15 yuan per kilogram in certain advantageous regions.

“When the price of green hydrogen is in the 25–30 yuan per kilogram range, in the transportation sector it can already form sufficient competition with gasoline and diesel. Even in scenarios where public fast-charging pile electricity prices are high, the energy price of green hydrogen can be close to that as well.” In Yu Zhuoping’s view, in commercial application scenarios such as operating vehicles and long-haul freight vehicles, hydrogen energy still has strong advantages.

In addition, China is also accelerating the expansion of green hydrogen into other application scenarios. In the “Notice on Carrying Out Pilot Projects for Comprehensive Applications of Hydrogen Energy,” it also proposed to explore innovative application scenarios for hydrogen energy, forming a hydrogen-energy comprehensive application ecosystem of “one general-purpose fuel-cell vehicle scenario + N application scenarios in industrial fields + X innovative application scenarios.”

Yu Zhuoping said that this pilot program for comprehensive hydrogen-energy applications is an upgrade achieved on the basis of the previous round of demonstrations in transportation scenarios. It marks that China’s hydrogen energy industry will move from exploration in a single scenario to an integrated stage of applications across multiple fields and across all scenarios.

For the future of the hydrogen energy industry, Yu Zhuoping is full of expectations. He believes that during the “15th five-year plan and the 5th” period—i.e., the 2026–2030 timeframe?—it will become a key period for the development of hydrogen energy in China. The industry will move from the exploration stage to scale, industrialization, and commercialization, achieving a leap from “following” to “co-running.” (China News Service APP)

All rights reserved by China News Service. Without authorization, no reprinting or use in any other way is permitted.

责任编辑：袁媛 贾亦夫