China claims the first-ever ‘green hydrogen’ standards

China has released standards and evaluation for various types of hydrogen, proposed by China Hydrogen Energy Alliance. China has now become the first country in the world to have established standards for measuring hydrogen carbon emissions, according to the association.

The standard uses a life cycle assessment approach to evaluate low-carbon hydrogen, clean hydrogen, and renewable hydrogen. It has set a threshold, in terms of unit hydrogen carbon emission, for low carbon hydrogen at 14.51 kgCO2e/kgH2, while the threshold for clean hydrogen and renewable hydrogen is set at 4.9 kgCO2e/kgH2. In addition, for renewable hydrogen, the energy used to produce the hydrogen has to be from renewable sources.

The green hydrogen certification is established based on taking into account domestic market conditions and European hydrogen production prices of natural gas. Preparation of these standards took almost a year and gathered opinions by conducting surveys and arranging seminars. Some of the organisations engaged in the process were National Energy Group, State Grid, PetroChina and Baowu Steel.

Currently, China is heavily relying on coal for hydrogen. These new standards are expected to guide China from such high carbon emission based hydrogen production process to green hydrogen production process. These new standards will help develop a better carbon and hydrogen market in China.