Hydrogen energy has become a national strategy for the first time and has a complete planning and timetable, while domestic hydrogen energy applications will be mainly concentrated in the field of transportation, which means that the importance of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is recognized by the state, but can it replicate the success of the pure electric vehicle industry? There is still a lot of controversy behind this.
Wen 丨 wisdom driving network Rain lai, Wang Shuoqi
Editor| Li Baitian
China's first hydrogen energy national strategy has to be said to have a profound geopolitical risk background at the time of its introduction.
For a long time, hydrogen has been managed as a dangerous chemical in the mainland, and the newly built hydrogen production projects are all "new hazardous chemical production projects", which are strictly prohibited from being built and expanded outside the chemical park.
On March 23, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued a series of energy plans such as the 14th Five-Year Plan for Modern Energy System Planning, the Medium- and Long-term Plan for the Development of Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035), and the Implementation Plan for the Development of New Energy Storage in the 14th Five-Year Plan.
It can be said that the "14th Five-Year Plan" Modern Energy System Planning is the outline, the "Medium- and Long-term Plan for the Development of Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035)" and the "14th Five-Year Plan" New Energy Storage Development Implementation Plan are the purposes, which are specific measures to promote energy cleanness and new energy structure gold diversification after having a top-level design and following the principle of "double carbon" timetable.
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Hydrogen energy is upgraded to a national strategy on an equal footing with electric energy
However, as the first national strategy for hydrogen energy, the medium- and long-term plan for the development of hydrogen energy industry (2021-2035) clarifies the energy attributes of hydrogen, clarifies for the first time that hydrogen energy is an important part of the future national energy system, and determines that hydrogen production from renewable energy is the main development direction.
The hydrogen energy industry is also regarded as a strategic emerging industry and a key development direction for the future industry.
The deeper implication is that hydrogen energy will be upgraded to a national strategy and will sit on an equal footing with electric energy.
Hydrogen energy has been elevated to such a position because of the same sense of urgency in China due to the transmission effect of the Energy Security Crisis in Europe caused by the Ukraine crisis.
At present, Europe is accelerating the pace of Energy Transition in Europe due to the energy crisis. Germany already plans to accelerate the expansion of renewable energy, aiming to meet all of its electricity needs with renewable energy supplies by 2035, five years ahead of the previous 2040 plan.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also made clear in a recent speech that hydrogen, like other renewables, will play an important role in ending Europe's dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
During the just-concluded Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games, hydrogen energy's performance also gave Chinese policymakers confidence.
At the 2022 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum held on March 26, the vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games demonstrations have a total of nearly 1,200 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, with a cumulative carbon reduction of 220 billion tons, ensuring the carbon neutrality and zero carbon emissions of the entire Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
I had the privilege of going to Yanqing the day before yesterday to observe and ride in this car, we took this car to the center of the sleigh, its slope is close to 20 degrees, but our fuel cell bus climbed up without any difficulty.
You told me that there were some nights during the Winter Olympics at minus 20 degrees, but most of our fuel cell vehicles were able to spend the winter outdoors, which also reflected the progress of fuel cell vehicles.
You can see that climbing such a road on a snowy day in the animation is not a general function, so I think this provides a good demonstration site for the development of hydrogen energy vehicles in our country.
For the hydrogen and fuel cell industries, he concluded:
Judging from the demonstration operation scenarios in various places, the comprehensive development of hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicles has entered the demonstration application of multiple scenarios of commercial vehicles. The life of fuel cells generally reaches more than 10,000 hours, and some of the systems in operation of fuel cell vehicles have reached 30,000 hours. The infrastructure of hydrogen energy, including green hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, operation and refueling, has favorablely supported the application of hydrogen fuel cells in long-distance passenger transport, long-distance freight, logistics, docks, mines and other long-distance heavy-duty fields.
In the lithium battery price amplitude oscillation caused by the price increase of electric vehicles in turn, the structural diversification of new energy is also being produced as part of ensuring industrial safety.
ZhiNengQiChe (ID: ZhiNengQiChe) examines this hydrogen energy development plan and has two proposals:
The first is an important carrier for energy terminals to achieve green and low-carbon transformation; wind power and solar power generation are regarded as the main energy sources for the development of hydrogen energy.
Second, the application of hydrogen energy is mainly concentrated in the field of transportation, that is, fuel cell vehicles.
The development goals of the hydrogen energy industry chain listed in the "Planning" are specifically described:
By 2025, a hydrogen energy supply system based on industrial by-product hydrogen and renewable energy hydrogen production and nearby utilization will be initially established。 The number of fuel cell vehicles is about 50,000, and a number of hydrogen refueling stations are deployed. The hydrogen production capacity of renewable energy has reached 100,000-200,000 tons/year, which has become an important part of new hydrogen energy consumption and achieved carbon dioxide emission reduction of 1 million-2 million tons/year。
This can be regarded as the first time that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been given the official identity at the policy level in addition to the roadmap for the transformation of vehicle power to pure electrification planned by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which is also a technical direction encouraged by the state.
▲The basic principle of hydrogen fuel cell
Therefore, we say that hydrogen-fueled electric vehicles have national endorsement.
At present, mainland hydrogen energy vehicles are still dominated by commercial vehicles, and as of 2021, the number of domestic fuel cell vehicles is 8936.
The planning listed to achieve 50,000 vehicles in 2025 is not radical, objectively speaking, such a plan is difficult to stimulate the interest of capital, because the plate of 50,000 vehicles, compared with this year's new energy vehicles (mainly pure electric vehicles) sales target of 5 million, the preferences of capital at a glance.
Therefore, there is a huge amount of doubt about whether the target of 50,000 vehicles in 2025 can really activate this industry.
Of course, doubts also mean opportunities.
According to the International Hydrogen Energy Commission, hydrogen energy will bear 18% of the world's energy terminal demand in 2050, creating a market value of more than 2.5 trillion US dollars, and the proportion of fuel cell vehicles in the world will increase to 20%-25%.
Today's phase of development of hydrogen-fueled electric vehicles is somewhat similar to the moment musk just released the Model S.
However, there has been a debate on the development of hydrogen energy, especially hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, in China.
First, the cost of hydrogen production is high and it is not easy to store; the transportation of hydrogen energy, storage container sealing technology and anti-pressure technology are risky;
Second, there is no obvious advantage between hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and pure electric vehicles, and the safety of hydrogen refueling stations is not easy to guarantee.
Cost issues and storage issues actually involve the problems of the mainland hydrogen energy industry chain.
In the early 1990s, countries and regions such as the European Union generally achieved carbon peaking. In 2007, the United States completed carbon peaking. In 2012, Japan completed its carbon peak.
In the development of the hydrogen energy industry chain, the country that took the lead in completing the carbon peak is ahead of China.
Two concepts need to be clarified here, namely hydrogen and hydrogen energy need to be understood differently.
Hydrogen belongs to the direct application of primary energy, and many enterprises have realized the internal circulation of hydrogen, but the latter belongs to the secondary energy application and requires the industrial chain to match.
Companies related to hydrogen energy mainly include: electrolyzed water enterprises, hydrogen energy fuel cell production enterprises, hydrogen energy vehicle production enterprises, hydrogen energy related safety technology research enterprises, etc.
At present, the mainland hydrogen energy industry chain is still in the early stage of development, compared with the international advanced level, there is still a gap in industrial innovation capabilities, technical equipment and other aspects.
However, these gaps are not insurmountable, there is no obvious technological gap and patent restrictions, and foreign hydrogen energy hydrogen refueling stations have also frequently exploded in the past two years, which can be said to be not mature products.
In terms of hydrogen preparation, although China is already the world's largest hydrogen producer, it is "mainly composed of fossil energy hydrogen production and industrial by-product hydrogen, coal-to-hydrogen and natural gas hydrogen production account for nearly 80%, chlor-alkali, coke oven gas, propane dehydrogenation and other industrial by-product hydrogen accounted for about 20%, renewable energy hydrogen production scale is still very small."
According to the China Hydrogen Energy Alliance, the output of electrolyzed water to hydrogen in 2019 is only about 500,000 tons.
The best way to produce hydrogen is to electrolyze water, so cheap electricity and cheap water are the core.
In solving the problem of hydrogen production costs, the plan has been clearly stated, that is, the use of wind energy, solar energy, wind energy hydrogen production in Zhangjiakou during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics has been relatively successful.
Modern cars compare hydrogen fuel to milk that can be transferred
For the use of wind energy, too energy to produce hydrogen, hyundai motors in the field of hydrogen energy has been called the milk that can be transferred, this strategy has been accepted by the world's major powers.
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The breakthrough of hydrogen energy applications should focus on commercial vehicles
So is hydrogen fuel cell suitable for passenger cars?
In the past two years, there are gradual conclusions, one is that the Japanese car companies that have been advocating hydrogen fuel cells have parted ways internally.
In January this year, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibu said in an interview with the media that Honda concluded 10 years ago after conducting a lot of research on the feasibility of hydrogenene on the internal combustion engine: hydrogen-fueled car internal combustion engines will not become the mainstream of the future for technical reasons.
Toshihiro Mibu even advised Akio Toyoda: "Toyota should stop pursuing the technology research and development of hydrogen fuels, and should focus on the research and development of pure electric vehicles." ”
However, if you change the direction, is hydrogen fuel cell vehicle more suitable for private cars or more suitable for large special transport vehicles?
The answer may vary.
On October 27, 2020, under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers of China, more than 1,000 experts from the whole industry were revised and compiled after one and a half years, and the "Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Technology Roadmap 2.0" specifically mentioned:
In the field of fuel cell vehicles, fuel cell commercial vehicles will be used as a breakthrough in the hydrogen fuel cell industry, and buses and urban logistics vehicles will be taken as the entry field, focusing on the promotion of large and medium-sized bus logistics vehicles in areas with renewable energy hydrogen production and industrial hydrogen-rich, and gradually promoted to medium and heavy trucks, tractors and port logistics vehicles with larger load capacity and long-distance operation, as well as some passenger cars.
In the future, from 2030 to 2035, the large-scale application of hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicles will be realized, and the number of fuel cell vehicles can reach about 1 million, and the future also wants to achieve fundamental technological breakthroughs from the aspects of basic materials, control technology, and hydrogen storage technology.
Taking hydrogen fuel cell commercial vehicles as a breakthrough has gradually become an industry consensus.
Hyundai Group's "Hydrogen Vision 2040" released at the Munich Motor Show last year is still very convincing for the exploration of hydrogen energy applications for the model planning of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
At this stage, the commercial use of hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars is a competitor of pure electric vehicles, but its supporting facilities and application convenience are even greater than the disadvantages of electric vehicles.
However, in today's context of oil prices, battery prices, and the energy security of all countries are facing challenges, hydrogen energy and lithium batteries can be regarded as a complementary relationship.
First of all, hydrogen fuel cells also have a small battery as a storage for kinetic energy recovery, and hydrogen energy has its unique advantages over pure electric vehicles: fast energy replenishment and not afraid of the impact of low temperatures.
As a mature industrial chain of national energy, the main advantage of electric vehicles is the popularization of charging piles, which does not require multiple conversions of electrical energy and chemical energy.
Therefore, hybrid, hydrogen fuel cells, and pure electric vehicles will become the three parallel power technology routes of continental automobiles, which is of far-reaching significance for breaking the dependence on fossil single energy.
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Layout of car companies: Japan and South Korea are in front, and Chinese car companies are close behind
Today, at a time when Honda and Toyota, the promoters of the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, hesitate, the layout of Chinese car companies and South Korea's Hyundai Group in the field of hydrogen energy is showing an ambitious side.
In June 2020, Six companies, China FAW Corporation, Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd., Beijing Automotive Group Co., Ltd., Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd., Beijing Yihuatong Technology Co., Ltd., and Toyota Motor Corporation, signed a joint venture contract in Beijing to establish "United Fuel Cell System Research and Development (Beijing) Co., Ltd." to popularize hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in China and promote the development of China's hydrogen energy society.
At that time, the purpose of this alliance was to need the landing of hydrogen fuel cells and attract infrastructure construction.
In March last year, Great Wall Motors released its own hydrogen energy strategy at the Haval Technology Center in Baoding, and Great Wall Motors wanted to build an international level "production-storage-transportation-plus-application" integrated hydrogen energy industry supply chain ecology.
Great Wall Motor has formulated a huge plan that starts in 2021 and ends in 2050, with a total cycle of more than 30 years, and is gradually implemented in three phases.
This is a hydrogen energy strategy that precedes China's 2060 carbon neutrality plan for 10 years, involving the upstream and downstream of the hydrogen energy industry, as well as commercial products, and adjusting power peaks and valleys through the construction of hydrogen energy storage facilities, forming a distributed energy supply model characterized by fuel cells and intelligent network distribution, in order to replace fossil energy in the whole society.
Great Wall Motors wants to build China's first and the world's third hydrogen energy industry chain with its own efforts.
However, as of now, Great Wall Motors has not yet launched a mass production model, which is also a regret.
Today, the only people who can produce hydrogen energy production cars are still Toyota and Hyundai.
At the Beijing Winter Olympics, which opened in February this year, more than 1,000 fuel cell vehicles in demonstration operation were mainly products of Toyota.
Toyota also brought the second-generation Mirai to China, earning enough eyeballs. Hyundai Motor's hydrogen-fueled electric vehicle NEXO China version was also introduced to the Chinese market for trial operation for the first time this year.
▲ Modern NEXO
From another perspective, Toyota and Hyundai, which hold the core technology, are showing a competitive situation in the Chinese market.
Unlike Toyota, which opens up technology to Local Chinese car companies to build an application alliance, Hyundai Group pays more attention to the upstream and downstream layout of the local industrial chain.
In China, it will be built into a comprehensive base including a hydrogen fuel cell stack plant, a hydrogen fuel cell system production plant, an R&D center and an innovation center. (See "Today's Modern 'Hydrogen' Gamble Convinces Me")
▲Modern automobile building block hydrogen energy urban power supply system
In modern hydrogen planning, the car is the most important part, but not only the car, it is also the solution for the energy of the future city.
From this perspective, the imagination space of hydrogen energy will be larger.
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Open the gate to release water and prevent hydrogen from overheating
Today, the hydrogen energy industry promoted by local governments and enterprises in China is very similar to the moment when electric vehicles began to develop, opening the floodgates and releasing water.
Let capital and hot money come in.
In August 2021, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong were selected as the first batch of national hydrogen fuel cell demonstration city clusters, and the national supplement policy for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles was officially implemented.
According to the local declaration plan, the number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles included in the subsidy is about 30,000, according to the subsidy amount of "year by year decline, the total amount is limited, first-come, first-served", all of which are intended to promote the large-scale release of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2022.
Relevant data show that in the first quarter of 2021, the mainland has more than 4900 fuel cell-related enterprises.
From a regional point of view, more than 20 provinces and more than 40 prefecture-level cities in the mainland have issued hydrogen energy plans, and more than 30 hydrogen energy industrial parks have been built, and the planned industrial scale has reached trillions of yuan.
This has also raised concerns about the overheating of the hydrogen energy industry in relevant departments.
At the same time as the release of the first national hydrogen energy plan, Wang Xiang, deputy director of the High Technology Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a press conference held on the 23rd that it is strictly forbidden to "race the land" in the name of building hydrogen energy projects, and it is strictly forbidden to compare with each other in the aspects of hydrogen energy industry planning, investment scale, investment attraction, and project construction.
This aims to avoid rushing and low-quality competition in the hydrogen energy industry.
Wang Xiang said, "In the next step, we will work with relevant departments to strengthen overall coordination, strengthen policy guidance and support, and actively promote the smooth implementation of the Medium and Long-term Plan for the Development of the Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035)." ”
The "14th Five-Year Plan" modern energy system plan, which is the top-level design of China's future energy governance, said: By 2025, the annual comprehensive production capacity of domestic energy will reach more than 4.6 billion tons of standard coal, the annual output of crude oil will rebound and stabilize at the level of 200 million tons, the annual output of natural gas will reach more than 230 billion cubic meters, the total installed capacity of power generation will reach about 3 billion kilowatts, and the installed capacity of nuclear power operation will reach about 70 million kilowatts. Under the premise of ensuring safety, actively and orderly promote the construction of coastal nuclear power projects, maintain a stable construction rhythm, rationally arrange new coastal nuclear power projects, and comprehensively promote the large-scale development and high-quality development of wind power and solar power generation。
And what is the modern energy system?
According to the National Development and Reform Commission, the eight words of "clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient" are the core connotations of the modern energy system, and they are also the overall requirements for how to modernize the energy system.
As the most perfect energy source, hydrogen energy can perfectly represent the eight words of "clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient".
But the dilemma of hydrogen energy vehicles in the past decade has been to have a car but no land hydrogenation can not be sold, hydrogen refueling station does not make money no one to build, there is no hydrogen refueling station car can not sell out of the dead cycle, and today China's first national hydrogen energy strategy can break this dead cycle?
Judging from the hydrogen heat of governments across the continent, there is a tendency to break this dead cycle.
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