Author | Pan Lei
Edit | Zi Yu
Image source | Official website of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee
In 2008, many people did not understand "pure electric vehicles", since the Beijing Summer Olympics used a large number of pure electric vehicles, people are now familiar with pure electric vehicles.
By the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles announced the arrival of the hydrogen energy era, and the number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles serving the Beijing Winter Olympics exceeded 1,000, and even the fuel for the torch was hydrogen, with zero pollution after combustion.
This makes the Winter Olympics the most environmentally friendly Olympic event ever, and perhaps soon, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will no longer be uncommon.
From this point of view, the 2022 Winter Olympics are very similar to the 2008 Olympic Games, because in the second year after the 2008 Olympic Games, the relevant departments launched the "Ten Cities and Thousand Vehicles Project" (the new energy vehicle demonstration and promotion project launched by the Ministry of Science and Technology and other four ministries and commissions in January 2009).
Most of the areas where this project was first promoted were concentrated in the areas of public transportation, taxi, municipal and postal services, which also means that for most people, buses will be one of the first carriers that may experience a "hydrogen society".
China's "Hydrogen Society"
A few days ago, Japan's Fukuoka and Toyota Motor signed a cooperation agreement to jointly build a "hydrogen energy city", the first phase of cooperation is to develop and introduce fuel cell vehicles, mainly including food delivery vehicles and garbage trucks.
This gives citizens the opportunity to experience a "hydrogen society".
China's hydrogen promotion path is similar to Fukuoka's, but it is faster – in 2016, a county-level city in Jiangsu, Rugao, was named a "hydrogen economy demonstration city" by the United Nations Development Programme.
Rugao has a hydrogen fuel cell bus, the fare is 2 yuan, which is similar to the bus price in most cities in the country.
The docent of the Hydrogen Energy Planning Experience Hall also has a "hydrogen charging treasure" in his hand, which can contain 10 liters of hydrogen, and 1 small can is enough for the mobile phone to be filled with 3 times of electricity.
Electricity for the city's utility lighting comes from fuel cell systems. The emergency power supply of a local hospital also comes from fuel cell power generation.
Rugao also has a planned 3.7 kilometers, can accommodate about 30,000 people "hydrogen energy demonstration town", the town's residents electricity, urban lighting, building emergency power supply, etc., all from hydrogen power generation.
But for most people, the scene that can access hydrogen energy is still the bus.
According to a 2020 statistic, there are currently 22 cities in the country, including Shanghai, Zhangjiagang, Yancheng, Rugao, Foshan, Yunfu, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, and Zhangjiakou, with nearly 800 buses operating in total.
According to the "Hydrogen Energy City Development Potential Ranking" released by Chinese Min University at the end of last year, the development of hydrogen energy in cities across the country is mainly concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, the Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration.
In 2025, 1,002 hydrogen refueling stations will be built nationwide and 54,800 hydrogen fuel vehicles will be promoted.
This is basically the same as the path of promoting lithium batteries in China.
Hydrogen energy will take the path of lithium battery promotion
Although hydrogen energy has many advantages and has been demonstrated and promoted for a long time, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been tepid so far, and many people do not really understand the car of this technical route.
This is mainly related to the current cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles - both the cost of purchasing a car and the cost of use are very high.
In terms of car purchase costs, take the most mature second-generation Toyota Mirai as an example, which is priced at about 445,000-505,000 yuan.
For a mid-level car, this price is too expensive, and the price of four or five hundred thousand is already the pricing range of BMW 5 Series or Mercedes-Benz E-Class.
Mercedes-Benz considered the advantage cost factor when it made the decision to abandon hydrogen fuel cell vehicles about 2 years ago – the cost of producing a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is about twice that of a pure electric vehicle.
In addition, the cost of using a car is not low, first of all, the hydrogen refueling station is not easy to find.
Public information shows that there are only 218 hydrogen refueling stations by the end of 2021, which limits the use scenarios of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
At the same time, the construction cost of hydrogen refueling stations is also high, and a conventional hydrogen refueling station needs to invest 15 million to 20 million yuan, which is far more than the cost of charging stations of about 1 million yuan after deducting government subsidies.
According to the subsidy policy implemented at the end of April 2020 in Huangpu District, Guangzhou, the maximum subsidy for the construction of a hydrogen refueling station is 6 million yuan, and the amount of subsidy cannot exceed 50% of the actual fixed asset investment.
Another shortcoming comes from the price of hydrogenation - hydrogen is divided into three types, namely gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen and green hydrogen, the first two are related to fossil energy, only green hydrogen comes from renewable energy sources such as solar energy and wind energy, but the preparation cost of these three hydrogens is relatively high.
For example, in terms of transportation and storage and transportation, because of the need for high-pressure hydrogen storage, the cost of this link accounts for about 30% of the entire hydrogen cost.
In the subsidy policy launched by Huangpu District, the subsidy standard in 2019 is 20 yuan / kg, 14 yuan / kg in 2020, and 9 yuan / kg in 2021, with the purpose of achieving that the price of hydrogen after subsidies is not higher than 30 yuan / kg.
This price is basically equivalent to the fuel cost of traditional trucks, which is already more cost-effective for passenger cars.
In October last year, Toyota's Mirai traveled 1359.89 kilometers in a single refueling, consuming a total of 5.65 kilograms of hydrogen fuel – according to this data, the cost of hydrogen refueling is less than 170 yuan, which is obviously very economical for users.
In the eyes of industry insiders, this development process is logical.
Li Xingxiang, chairman of Xiaolan Technology, who is engaged in the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell stacks, said that hydrogen fuel cells, like semiconductors, lithium batteries, wind power and photovoltaics, are all emerging industries rooted in China, so the development path must be similar, and they have gone through three stages: demonstration period, transition period and parity period.
In the end, after policy support, hydrogen energy will gradually transition from policy-driven to market-driven, and will also usher in its own industrial chain outbreak moment.
Hydrogen energy is on the eve of the outbreak
Bai Yiyang, head of the securities department of CMB International, believes that under the circumstance that "carbon neutrality" has become a global consensus, hydrogen energy has also become an important direction for governments, including China, to fulfill the "double carbon commitment" and promote energy transformation.
As early as the 2015 Paris climate conference, China set a goal in its Nationally Determined Contributions to peak carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and strive to achieve them as soon as possible.
Since the "13th Five-Year Plan" announced in 2016, hydrogen energy and fuel cells have been included in the "Strategic Emerging Industry Development Action".
In September 2020, China clearly proposed the "carbon peak" in 2030 and the "carbon neutrality" target in 2060.
Therefore, in the context of double carbon, hydrogen energy will become an important carrier of renewable energy, driving renewable energy from the consumer side from the power sector to the transportation sector, so as to achieve carbon reduction and decarbonization.
In addition to the national energy transformation, the cost problems that previously plagued the promotion of hydrogen energy have also been alleviated to a certain extent, for example, in the main application scenarios of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the cost of core components including stacks has been reduced by more than 25% in the past 5 years, thus promoting the industrialization process.
Fu Yu, chairman of Ji Chong Hydrogen Energy, who focuses on the research and development of high-power hydrogen fuel cell stacks, said that although the company has been established for 3 years, it has been engaged in hydrogen fuel cell research and development for more than 20 years, and at the same time, in the core links such as stack design, key materials and core processes, through technological innovation to achieve low-cost applications under the condition of mass production of stack products.
Based on the above factors, many industry institutions believe that although the current hydrogen energy utilization faces multiple bottlenecks such as production, transportation and terminal hydrogen refueling stations, the current development status is equivalent to the lithium battery industry ten years ago, and the prospects are good.
The Society of Automotive Engineers of China predicts that by 2030, the output value of China's hydrogen energy vehicle industry is expected to exceed one trillion yuan.
The "China Hydrogen Energy Industry Development Report 2020" released by the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association also shows that the number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will reach 30 million in 2050.
Some hydrogen energy practitioners believe that similar to the promotion of lithium batteries in that year, the problems faced by hydrogen energy promotion are not solved by a single enterprise, but need to be promoted uniformly at the national policy level. "Once hydrogen energy achieves scale effect, the entire industry will significantly accelerate."
The specific path is to first open a gap in the field of commercial vehicles through large-scale public events such as the Winter Olympics and enhance public awareness, and then gradually enter the field of passenger cars, and finally achieve large-scale deployment.
It is worth mentioning that the incentive policy has also been implemented.
As early as the two sessions in 2019, hydrogen energy was written into the "Government Work Report".
The "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Central Enterprises and Doing a Good Job in Carbon Neutralization" issued by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission at the end of November last year clearly proposed to build a hydrogen energy industry system and improve the integrated layout of hydrogen energy production, storage, transportation and use.
In March 2021, hydrogen energy was included in the draft outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan.
By the end of 2021, many provinces and cities such as Beijing and Tianjin have formulated hydrogen energy development plans.
The subsidy policy launched by Shanghai Qingpu has a maximum subsidy of 5 million yuan for hydrogen refueling stations, and a maximum of 20 yuan / kg for hydrogenation subsidies.
Fu Yu told Chuangbang that he has been engaged in the hydrogen energy industry for more than 20 years, and his view of this track has not changed, "This is a good technology (direction) and an important means to achieve the goal of 'double carbon'."
Guan Menglin, investment director of Zhongke Chuangxing, also believes that hydrogen energy will definitely occupy a place in the future energy structure, and under the blessing of policies, this track does have some expected effects now, and funds and talents are also gathering in this field.
But both people stressed that hydrogen energy as a technology-intensive industry needs to be more rational than the so-called "outlet". "Even lithium batteries have undergone a long-term development process to achieve large-scale industrialization."
Hydrogen energy application "can't get up fast"
Fu Yu said that the current external environment of the hydrogen energy industry is very good, but some companies have taken too big steps, and once there is a problem, it will affect the healthy development of the entire industry. "So we are still relatively cautious, or in accordance with the laws of industry and products, step by step."
He pointed out that the core components of automotive products have a cycle of their own, and it takes at least three years to complete the design, trial production and test verification process. Moreover, the fuel cell industry has very few talents and technologies, which cannot support the needs of rapid product upgrading and iteration.
The key point is that in the case of hydrogen fuel cells, although there have been many performance advances in the past year or two, there has been no qualitative breakthrough. "Therefore, it requires the entire industry to be patient and do solid engineering, and turn the research samples into products that can be mass manufactured, mature and reliable, and low-cost, which requires many engineers to invest a lot of time and resources to solve."
Fu Yu also stressed that hydrogen energy is actually not a new technology, and even has a history of hundreds of years, which shows from the side that it is a technology that is difficult to industrialize, the barriers are very high, and the industrial chain involved is very long.
For example, he said, Toyota motor began to dabble in hydrogen technology in 1991, and has been doing it for 30 years, and has only released two commercial models. China began to work related to the industrialization of fuel cells in 2001, and has also completed the development of two generations of products.
Specific to Ji Chong hydrogen energy, the pain points of the industry solved are mainly focused on the design and manufacturing technology of the key component of the hydrogen fuel cell stack. "Every link is sophisticated. Laser welding technology alone has accumulated for ten years and done four iterations to finally achieve it, and the coating technology that takes into account anti-corrosion, conductive and low-cost coating technology has been done for 20 years in two generations."
Based on this, he believes that hydrogen energy applications, including hydrogen fuel cell technology, are not an area where mature products can be quickly landed and upgraded through rapid investment.
Li Xingxiang, chairman of Xiaolan Technology, also reminded that do not ignore the basic development law of the automotive industry, Japan, South Korea's development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have experienced 15-20 years of development time, so putting aside the basic law to talk about the industry is a waste of talk.
He said that hydrogen energy seems to be hot, in fact, it is not much different from two years ago, the only difference is that there are more people coming in, it seems to be lively, "This industry can't get up at all." Breakthroughs in core technologies such as proton exchange membranes, catalysts, and hydrogen storage systems will be much more difficult than imagined, and infrastructure development will not keep up, which will take time."
Public information shows that the hydrogen storage system can achieve 35 MPa at home, 70 MPa abroad, proton exchange membrane, foreign has achieved product production, domestic has not yet fully realized this.
Li Xingxiang does not agree with the widely circulated statement that hydrogen fuel cells are the "ultimate solution" for new energy vehicles. "Hydrogen fuel cells and lithium batteries are not subversive or alternative to each other, they all belong to a category that provides power for new energy vehicles, and can coexist and coexist, seeking common ground while reserving differences."
Guan Menglin also believes that hydrogen energy has the characteristics of clean and efficient, but as a secondary energy, there are also cost shortcomings in preparation, storage and transportation, so from the perspective of energy structure, the future will be a diversified energy structure.
In cold regions like the Northeast, hydrogen fuel cells that are not affected by low temperatures can be used, while in the relatively warm south, lithium battery schemes can be applied.
Hydrogen energy entrepreneurship, regardless of morning and evening
Under the policy dividend, a large number of startups related to hydrogen energy have emerged.
Tianyancha had released the number of startups related to fuel cells in 2020, and the data at that time showed that there were more than 2200 fuel cell companies.
According to the incomplete statistics of the analysis of Chuangyebang Ruibea, there will be 30 financing events in hydrogen energy-related fields in 2021, with a financing scale of more than 14.7 billion yuan (some financing has not disclosed a specific amount), distributed in hydrogen fuel cells, energy storage, stack research and development, core materials and other segments.
From the perspective of investors, Guan Menglin believes that she will tend to lay out some core links with relatively large output value scale, relatively high technical difficulty and decisive factors for the development of the entire industry in the future. "Where the industry is stuck, we will invest."
But she believes that the logic of starting a business in the hydrogen field is still very different from the logic of her own investment. "The technology and resources of this track are very demanding. Entrepreneurs need to have technology accumulation, but also have upstream and downstream cooperation resources, because this industry can hardly achieve a single point breakthrough, but relies on collaborative innovation of the industrial chain."
This was verified in Ji Chong Hydrogen Energy, founded by Fu Yu - he has been engaged in the research and development of hydrogen fuel cells for more than 20 years, and he is a technical expert himself, and has also accumulated enough upstream and downstream cooperation resources in the industry.
He believes that hydrogen fuel cells, as one of the most ideal power sources for automobiles, are at least one thing that generations can continue to do, so it is not too late to enter this industry at any time, but in the process of development, it can make up for market resources, technical resources and capital resources, "it is a good company."
Li Xingxiang of Xiaolan Technology remains optimistic about the future. "The common problem facing the Japanese and South Korean markets is that there is no scale, which makes them only anxious about the next step." But China is different. The hydrogen fuel cell vehicle market will be the same as pure electric vehicles, and it will inevitably be the world of Chinese – which is the meaning of those of us who are struggling."
Hydrogen society, how long will it take?
In addition to the hydrogen demonstration town in Rugao a few years ago, the latest hydrogen energy life model should be the "Harumi Olympic Village" where athletes lived at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
This is a community with hydrogen energy as the main distributed energy source. Panasonic provides stationary hydrogen power generation and heating equipment.
This is also closely related to Japan's route to promote hydrogen energy - to promote the research and development of household hydrogen energy technology, and to launch the household fuel cell combined heat and power (ENE-FARM) program.
A household hydrogen fuel cell device launched by Panasonic, similar to a "cabinet", uses hydrogen fuel to generate electricity, and the heat generated during the power generation process can also heat the home, equivalent to a household micro thermal power station.
The enlightenment of this route to China is that the home application of hydrogen energy should also be included in distributed energy sources, enjoying the subsidy policy of distributed energy resources.
Industry insiders predict that in 2050, China will enter the hydrogen energy society, and individuals and social life will be inseparable from hydrogen energy.
At that time, home heating will not require natural gas, and the car will not add oil, but hydrogen - the water discharged by the hydrogen fuel cell bus at the Beijing Winter Olympics is said to be no problem to drink directly.
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