China’s hydrogen fuel stations strategy is falling far behind its 2025 goals

China’s hydrogen fuel stations strategy is falling far behind its 2025 goals

April 1, 2024 0 By John Max

Despite being well ahead of any other country in its H2 refueling network, it’s likely to miss targets.

Despite China’s position as world leader in its network of hydrogen fuel stations, it is nowhere near the point that would align it to meet its targets for 2025.

So far, only 30 percent of locations are built

China has built out the globe’s largest network of hydrogen fuel stations, but when it all comes down to it, it has only constructed 30 percent of the over 1,200 locations comprising its target by the close of 2025.

By the end of last year, it already had 354 operating locations, according to data released by UK analyst Interact Analysis. However, despite this achievement, it remains nowhere near the target it intends to meet by the end of next year.

Principal analyst from the firm Shirly Zhu stated that “progress is lagging behind” the number of operational locations. By the start of 2024, only about one third of the 2025 target had been achieved.

New hydrogen fuel stations under construction

China already has an additional 50 refueling locations under construction.  Still, even with those additional hydrogen fuel stations taken into account, this still means that the country will have reached less than half of its target for the close of next year.

Hydrogen fuel stations - fuel pump - China Flag

Across the country, thirteen of its municipalities and provinces have over ten H2 refueling locations operating.  Guangdong is by far leading the way with its 68 locations. Still, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shangdong, Hebei, and Hubei each have over 20 H2 refueling locations operating.

That said, as much as those may sound impressive and are higher than the national average, they are far from actually reaching their 2025 targets. For instance, Guangdong’s target is for 200 stations.

The only province that has actually met its 2025 target is Tianjin. However, that province set its target quite low in comparison, having aimed for only 5 sites.

Closing Thoughts

hydrogen news ebookThere is still time, and it could be that each of the provinces still aiming for their targets for hydrogen fuel stations could launch new components to their strategies that could involve massive deployment.  That said, when considering that many must double or triple their existing figures, it seems unlikely that this would be achieved by the majority, let alone across the board.

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