Under the background of global acceleration of carbon neutrality, hydrogen energy, as one of the ideal renewable energy sources, is developing rapidly. Why does China transport from west to east? Why not produce locally and avoid long-distance transportation? During the interview, the reporter learned that there are hydrogen resources in eastern China, but most of these hydrogen are industrial by-products of petrochemical enterprises. For example, the electricity obtained by photovoltaic or wind power equipment, and the hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water are green hydrogen without any pollution. To achieve this, the western region of China is undoubtedly the first choice, where wind and light resources are abundant, and renewable energy power generation is developing rapidly. Therefore, choosing to develop green hydrogen production capacity in the west has unique advantages.

According to the formation process of hydrogen energy, hydrogen energy is generally divided into gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen and green hydrogen. Gray hydrogen is mainly hydrogen produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, and carbon dioxide and other emissions will be emitted during the production process. Currently, the vast majority of hydrogen on the market is gray hydrogen, accounting for about 95% of today's global hydrogen production. Blue hydrogen refers to the hydrogen produced by fossil energy that adopts carbon capture measures, and the carbon emission intensity is greatly reduced. Green hydrogen refers to the hydrogen obtained by splitting water with renewable energy.

Up to now, the length of hydrogen pipelines in China still lags behind that of developed countries, and the construction progress is relatively slow. At present, the total mileage in China is only 400 kilometers, and the pipelines in use are only about 100 kilometers.

The total mileage of hydrogen pipelines in the world has exceeded 5,000km, the total mileage of hydrogen pipelines in the United States has exceeded 2,700km, ranking first, and the length of hydrogen pipelines in Europe has reached 1,770km. Therefore, experts told reporters that on the one hand, it is necessary to speed up the construction of hydrogen pipelines, and on the other hand, it is also a good choice to use existing natural gas pipelines for mixed hydrogen transportation. Editor/Xu Shengpeng