Exploring the potential of hydrogen in decarbonizing China's light-duty vehicle market

The Chinese government has pledged to achieve overall carbon neutrality by 2060. Currently, the transportation sector contributes to about 10% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in China. Hence, China has created a well-defined energy vehicle development strategy to reduce GHG emissions from the transportation sector, further expanding into hydrogen vehicle technologies. In this study, the Transportation Energy Analysis Model (TEAM) investigates the potential of hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicles (H2- ICEVs) and fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs) as a reliable pathway towards the government's aspiration of carbon neutrality in the transportation sector. According to TEAM, by adopting FCEVs and H2-ICEVs in the vehicle market, hydrogen demand could reach 25% of the total light-duty transportation energy demand in 2050. Consequently, this will lead to an annual reduction of more than 35 million tons GHG compared to only counting on the electrification pathway in the decarbonization task. Besides, FCEVs would take longer to penetrate the light-duty vehicle market compared to H2-ICEVs, as the current fuel cell technology still requires much improvement to attain a competitive vehicle cost of production.(c) 2022 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

China aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 and plans to use hydrogen vehicle technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Transportation Energy Analysis Model, hydrogen demand could reach 25% of the total transportation energy demand by 2050.