China's Sinopec building 1,000 hydrogen refueling stations in next 5 years

Sinopec accelerates hydrogen energy development to build world-leading clean energy chemical company.

Sinopec will accelerate their hydrogen infrastructure roll out to reach 1,000 new stations by 2026, said Ma Yongsheng, President of China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), in a session recently held in Beijing.

Ma suggested to devote more efforts in top-level design, core technology R&D, standard system formulation and industrial policy support. China has achieved significant progress in hydrogen energy-related technologies, but the sector remains in the pilot demonstration and market promotion stage.

"In the future, people will not only pump gasoline and diesel in Sinopec's gas stations, but also hydrogen refueling and electricity among other businesses,” said Ma.

The China Hydrogen Energy Alliance predicts that by 2050, China's annual hydrogen demand will be close to 60 million tons, which would help the country to cut 700 million tons from its carbon dioxide emissions.

By the end of 2020, China had an inventory of 7,352 fuel cell vehicles, 128 built hydrogen refueling stations with 101 already put into operation, ranking second worldwide only to Japan.

Sinopec's Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Company has built a hydrogen purification unit which successfully produced hydrogen with purity of over 99.9 percent in March 2020, achieving a daily production capacity of 500 kilograms of battery hydrogen products to meet the market's demand.