2024-08-17
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Interface News reporter | Ding Jingjing
According to China National Radio, on August 15, the second Western Hydrogen Energy Expo was held in Yulin. It was reported that it was announced at the meeting that hydrogen energy vehicles equipped with ETC equipment will be fully exempted from highway tolls in Shaanxi Province from September 1, 2024. The policy will end on September 1, 2027.
In addition, on August 13, Jilin Province issued a notice on the implementation of preferential treatment for hydrogen-powered vehicles on Jilin Province's highways. The notice clearly stated that from 0:00 on September 1, 2024 to 24:00 on August 31, 2026, hydrogen-powered vehicles registered in Jilin Province equipped with ETC equipment can pass point-to-point free of charge between toll stations on various highways in Jilin Province, and the corresponding highway tolls will be paid by the provincial finance.
The policy of subsidizing highway tolls was first proposed by Shandong Province in February this year, and many provinces have recently followed suit. So far, four provinces, including Shaanxi, Jilin, Shandong, Sichuan, and Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, have clearly introduced a policy of exempting hydrogen energy vehicles from highway tolls.
In the past two years, under the global background of carbon neutrality and carbon peak, hydrogen energy as a clean, efficient and renewable energy has attracted much attention. This year, the country has issued a number of relevant policies to promote the development of upstream and downstream links of hydrogen energy.
Transportation has always been the most promising application track for hydrogen energy. Hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles, which mainly focus on specific scenarios such as urban public transportation and port logistics, have always been considered by industry insiders as a breakthrough for the large-scale commercialization of hydrogen energy in the transportation field.
However, hydrogen energy is still in its early stages of development, and storage and transportation are expensive. High costs are still one of the key obstacles to the large-scale implementation of hydrogen commercial vehicles. According to relevant calculations by the industry research institution Orange Club Research Institute, without considering subsidies, based on the price of a 49-ton hydrogen fuel cell heavy truck of 1.1 million yuan, a hydrogen consumption of 9kg/100km, and a hydrogen price of 30 yuan/kg, the full life cycle cost of a 49-ton hydrogen heavy truck is 6.722 million yuan, which is significantly higher than the cost of 5.373 million yuan for a fuel heavy truck of the same specification.
In order to promote the application of hydrogen energy vehicles, many places currently subsidize the application of hydrogen energy vehicles in various ways, and exemption from highway tolls is one of them.
"The highway tolls over the entire life cycle of a hydrogen-powered heavy-duty truck are about 1.7 million yuan, accounting for about a quarter of the total cost. Excluding the 1.7 million yuan in tolls, the full life cycle cost of a hydrogen-powered heavy-duty truck will drop to about 5 million yuan, which will be nearly 400,000 yuan cheaper than a fuel-powered heavy-duty truck. This will help accelerate the promotion of hydrogen-powered vehicles." Zhang Shengqing, deputy director of the Industrial Research Department of the Hydrogen Energy Research Institute of the Orange Club Research Institute, told Interface News.
In the view of industry insiders, this is an innovative way to subsidize hydrogen energy vehicles in terms of operating costs, which effectively reduces the operating costs of hydrogen energy vehicles and helps the early promotion of hydrogen energy commercial vehicles. On the other hand, compared with the previous policy method of subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles, this policy focuses on the use of hydrogen energy vehicles, and also avoids the waste of resources such as a large number of zombie cars that are bought but not used.
Zhang Shengqing believes that although Shaanxi and Jilin, which were recently announced, are not part of the five demonstration cities like some cities in Shandong and Ordos in Inner Mongolia, these cities are rich in local coal, wind and solar resources and low electricity prices. Compared with the coastal areas where electricity resources were originally tight, they have obvious advantages in energy resources and can provide relatively cheap hydrogen energy. At the same time, these cities also have application scenarios such as coal transportation, and the upstream and downstream industries can form a closed loop, which makes them more advantageous in policy implementation than other cities.
However, the policy of free highway tolls for hydrogen vehicles has not yet been promoted nationwide, and its impact is relatively limited. In Zhang Shengqing's opinion, in the future, the policy of free highway tolls for hydrogen vehicles is expected to be further expanded to the national level.
In addition, Jiemian News observed that the above-mentioned policies of exempting highway tolls in the above-mentioned provinces and cities are short-term policies, which will be implemented for two to three years. In this regard, Zhang Shengqing pointed out that in the next two to three years, with the promotion of hydrogen energy, both the cost of purchasing cars and the cost of hydrogen fuel will have a lot of room for decline, "and many companies are currently focusing on this point."
In addition to the implementation of the toll-free policy for hydrogen-powered vehicles on highways in many places, many places have also introduced policies for the development of the hydrogen energy industry. For example, on August 13, Jiangxi issued the "Several Measures on Promoting the High-Quality Development of the Hydrogen Energy Industry", which pointed out that Jiujiang City was identified as the "Provincial Hydrogen Economy Opening Pilot Zone", focusing on the development of hydrogen energy industries along rivers and lakes featuring hydrogen-powered ships, and exploring the application of hydrogen energy in petrochemicals, metallurgy, steel and other fields.
From the perspective of the overall industry trend, Guotai Junan Securities believes that the hydrogen energy and fuel cell industry will enter a period of rapid growth in 2024, and the implementation of fuel cell vehicles and green hydrogen projects will be greatly accelerated.
Since the beginning of this year, various parts of China have continuously issued hydrogen vehicle tenders. As of March this year, there have been at least 13 hydrogen vehicle tenders in China, and the cumulative total amount of tenders has exceeded the total purchase volume of fuel cell vehicles in the whole of last year.
Since the beginning of this year, the number of public deliveries and commissioning of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in China has increased significantly. According to incomplete statistics, there have been more than 40 delivery reports so far.
The production and sales of hydrogen vehicles in China are also growing. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, by the first half of 2024, my country's hydrogen vehicle sales reached 20,742 units, officially breaking the 20,000 mark, becoming the second country after South Korea to break the 20,000 mark. From January to July this year, the production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles was 3,673 units and the sales volume was 3,422 units, with production and sales increasing by 28% and 25.5% year-on-year respectively.
In addition, the continuous growth of hydrogen-powered vehicles has also driven the growth of sales in the upstream hydrogen energy industry. The number of tenders for electrolyzers, the core equipment for green hydrogen production, has increased significantly. According to statistics from Guojin Securities, from January to June this year, there were 7 green hydrogen projects that publicly tendered electrolyzers, with a total electrolyzer tender volume of 249.5MW. Currently, a total of 407,700 tons of green hydrogen projects have been started, and 906 sets of electrolyzers will be tendered one after another.
However, there are still many aspects that need to be supplemented in hydrogen energy vehicles. Zhang Shengqing said that first of all, in terms of technology, the stability and transportation efficiency of hydrogen energy need to be further improved in multiple links such as production, storage and transportation; in addition, the number of hydrogen refueling stations is small and the approval is difficult, so local policies need to be further relaxed to help the development of the hydrogen energy industry chain; in terms of popularization among the public, the government, enterprises and other departments need to strengthen the popularization of hydrogen energy to promote the use of hydrogen energy vehicles on the road.
Previously, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration recently jointly issued the "Medium- and Long-Term Development Plan for the Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), proposing that by 2025, core technologies and manufacturing processes will be basically mastered, and the number of fuel cell vehicles in operation will be about 50,000.
Zhang Shengqing believes that the current frequent issuance of relevant government policies is expected to further promote the sales of hydrogen-powered vehicles.