Outside In | Could Hong Kong be a leader in hydrogen use? Don’t hold your breath

There is scant evidence of trailblazing progress on the ground in Hong Kong, but mainland China is making headway and the city could play a role in these efforts

Globally, however, investment in green hydrogen will need to be scaled up dramatically to make a significant contribution to reducing carbon emissions

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A model of a Hyundai HDC-6 Neptune hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric truck is displayed at a hydrogen energy demonstration zone in the Daxing district of Beijing on May 31. Hydrogen has great promise as a source of green energy, but a lack of investment and efficiency means a ‘hydrogen economy’ is still many years away. Photo: Reuters

Published: 6:15am, 1 Jul 2023Updated: 6:47am, 1 Jul 2023

For as long as I can remember, through years of debate on climate change and how to get to net zero carbon emissions, somewhere in the footnotes there has always been discussion of hydrogen, always in the form of “pilots”, “trials” or “prototypes”. In the International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook 2023, released in April, hydrogen warranted only a few token mentions and two charts.

So when I read in the Post last week that “Hong Kong has the potential to be a leader in hydrogen ulitisation”, my curiosity reignited. Can Hong Kong really lead the world in a technology that has tantalised and frustrated for decades?

In short, we should not hold our breath. The Post report outlined plans for a first hydrogen refuelling station. Behind this is a single Citybus trial of a hydrogen-fuelled double-decker bus, hopefully to start in the second half of this year, with long-term plans for the use of hydrogen in road transport set to be formulated by the government by 2025. It is still illegal in Hong Kong to use “highly flammable liquid hydrogen” as fuel or even to transport it by road.

There is scant evidence of any trailblazing aspirations here in Hong Kong, but that does not mean potentially significant progress is not being made elsewhere. Hydrogen-powered trains have been piloted in Germany, hydrogen power plants in Japan and hydrogen-powered iron and steel production in Sweden.

At the national level, China is particularly active, with more than 120 renewable hydrogen projects reportedly in progress. China also leads with its development plan for the hydrogen industry, prioritising mobility and then looking to applications in steelmaking, petrochemicals and chemicals.

But China’s progress also comes with problems. Two-thirds of its 33 megatonnes of annual hydrogen production comes from coal. So while China’s hydrogen-powered vehicles produce no roadside carbon dioxide, the original production of the hydrogen produces a thumping 360 megatonnes of CO2 emissions.