11-03-2021

Sinopec accelerates hydrogen energy development to build world-leading clean energy chemical company

Mr. Ma Yongsheng, President of China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation and Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, has proposed to accelerate hydrogen energy industry development during the Two Sessions recently held in Beijing. Mr. Ma suggested to devote more efforts in top-level design, core technology R&D, standard system formulation and industrial policy support.

As a secondary source of energy, hydrogen is playing an increasingly important role on the world energy stage. At present, China has achieved significant progress in hydrogen energy-related technologies, but the hydrogen energy industry remains in the pilot demonstration and market promotion stage.

Mr. Ma noted the many advantages of hydrogen energy, such as its varied sources, zero terminal discharge and wide range of applications. According to the international Hydrogen Council, hydrogen energy will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by six billion tons by 2050. Meanwhile, the China Hydrogen Energy Alliance predicts that by 2050, China's annual hydrogen demand will be close to 60 million tons, which would help the country to cut 700 million tons from its carbon dioxide emissions.

Since 2020, China has successively issued the “Notice of Launching Demonstration Applications of Fuel Cell Vehicles” and the “New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan  (2021-2035),” and supporting plans and policies to promote hydrogen energy R&D, production, storage and transportation and application have been introduced by local authorities across China. As of the end of 2020, China has an inventory of 7,352 fuel cell vehicles, 128 hydrogen refueling stations have been built with 101 already put into operation, ranking second worldwide only to Japan.

Sinopec currently produces 3.5 million tons of hydrogen per year. In 2020, Sinopec started to advance and accelerate the construction of an integrated hydrogen energy industry chain across various fields — capital operation, technology R&D, production storage and transportation, network distribution and social cooperation.

Sinopec has built hydrogen refueling stations in Guangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangxi and more, and 10 oil-hydrogen mixing stations are now in operation.

As part of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, Sinopec has included “clean” in the company vision for the first time. Carrying the goal of building China’s largest hydrogen energy company, Sinopec will also be promoting clean energy construction through accelerating the transformation of hydrogen sources from grey hydrogen to blue and green hydrogen.

“During the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’ period, Sinopec will layout 1,000 hydrogen refueling stations and step up to become a service provider of ‘oil, gas, hydrogen, electricity and non-oil business’ through transformation,” said Mr. Ma. “In the future, people will not only pump gasoline and diesel in Sinopec’s gas stations, but also hydrogen refueling and electricity among other businesses.”

To better promote the market application of the hydrogen energy industry, Sinopec as an official partner of the 2022 Winter Olympics will guarantee supply of clean energy for the Game’s infrastructure construction and operations to empower a “Green Winter Olympics.”

Therefore, Sinopec’s Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Company has built a hydrogen purification unit which successfully produced hydrogen with purity of over 99.9 percent in March, 2020, achieving a daily production capacity of 500 kilograms of battery hydrogen products to meet the market’s demand.