The White Paper on Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Industry in China pointed out that to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality in 2060, hydrogen energy will play an important role in industries that are difficult to decarbonize, such as heavy industry, transportation, building heating and so on. The "diversified application" of hydrogen energy mainly includes four key fields, which are also closely related. Hydrogen production, hydrogen storage and hydrogen use are closely linked.
Although in the field of passenger cars, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have lost to pure electric vehicles. However, hydrogen has high energy density and high conversion efficiency. The energy generated by its combustion is three times that of oil with the same weight and four times that of coal. In electrochemical reaction, the efficiency of converting chemical energy into electrical energy exceeds 80%. Therefore, in the new energy passenger and cargo vehicles, ships, planes and so on, such as medium and heavy-duty cars, buses and trucks. Hydrogen energy will have more advantages.
Hydrogen production is a stumbling block to the development of hydrogen energy;
The fatal disadvantages of hydrogen energy are high cost and low economic and environmental benefits. Hydrogen is a secondary energy source and cannot be used in nature. According to the data in 2020, the production of hydrogen in China is still dominated by "grey hydrogen", supplemented by "blue hydrogen", and the proportion of "green hydrogen" is too low. Hydrogen production from coal, natural gas and industrial by-products accounted for 62%, 19% and 18% respectively.