China's Sinopec Starts First Green Hydrogen Plant in Xinjiang

Chinese oil giant Sinopec has begun producing green hydrogen at a plant in Xinjiang, using solar power to electrolyse water, the company announced on Friday.

The facility is Sinopec’s first green hydrogen plant and has the capacity to produce 20,000 metric tonnes of hydrogen a year, it said in a statement.

The plant, in Kuqa city in the western China province, is the country’s first solar green hydrogen facility with an annual capacity of more than 10,000 metric tonnes, it said.

That would make it the largest green hydrogen facility operating in the country.

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China and other countries are racing to develop green hydrogen – produced using renewable power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen – as a crucial source of fuel with no carbon emissions to help limit climate change.

China’s state planner last year announced a target to produce 100,000 to 200,000 metric tonnes of green hydrogen a year by 2025.

Sinopec’s facility, along with its production capacity, has hydrogen storage capacity of 210,000 cubic metres and transmission capacity of 28,000 cubic metres per hour, the company said.

Hydrogen produced at the facility will be supplied to Sinopec’s Tahe refinery to replace hydrogen produced from natural gas.

Sinopec began construction of the plant in November 2021, with an initial investment of about 3 billion yuan ($414 million).

In February, the company launched construction of a 30,000 metric tonne green hydrogen demonstration project in Inner Mongolia and announced plans to build a 400km pipeline from Inner Mongolia to the capital, Beijing, to transport hydrogen.