Sinopec Corp plans to spend 30 billion yuan ($4.6 billion) on hydrogen energy by 2025, as the state oil and gas major pivots to natural gas and hydrogen, with the aim of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. It plans to become China’s largest player to use hydrogen as transportation fuel, targeting an annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes of hydrogen refuelling by 2025. Sinopec will expand forcefully into making hydrogen from renewable energy, and zero in on hydrogen for transportation fuel and using green hydrogen for refining.
The company aims to produce more than 1 million tonnes of hydrogen using renewable energy between 2021 and 2025, as well as add 400 megawatts of solar power generation capacity for supplying electricity to charge vehicles. Sinopec has so far built 20 hydrogen filling stations, with another 60 under construction or in the planning and approval stage. The company, which reported its highest first-half net profit since 2018 on rebounding oil and gas prices as well as steady domestic fuel demand, expects China’s natural gas demand to maintain double-digit growth over the next three years. Gas consumption is expected to rise 13.3% in 2021, helped by a strong economic recovery and Beijing’s continued push to replace coal with lower-carbon gas. Like state-run peers PetroChina and CNOOC Ltd that are prioritising natural gas development over oil, Sinopec plans to boost its gas output by 13.5% in the second half of this year from a year earlier, compared with a 13.7% growth in the first six months.