【英文】HSBC报告：中国绿色氢：准备好了吗（56页）

英文研究报告 2022年04月22日 07:00 管理员

We expect the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) — a measure that removes the impact of direct subsidies and includes the costs of construction, operations and financing for a new plant — of green hydrogen to decline by 38% from cRMB24/kg (1200 operating hours) in 2021 to RMB15/kg (1200 operating hours) in 2025e, or USD2.5/kg. This will allow green hydrogen to be cheaper than blue hydrogen (made from natural gas or coal while capturing the carbon dioxide emitted) in regions that have good sunlight conditions for the solar panels needed for renewable energy (e.g. RMB12/kg cost for green hydrogen when there are 1,500 effective annual operating hours for solar). This will not be the final destination for costs as BloombergNEF (BNEF) estimates that renewable hydrogen costs may fall to as low as USD1.4/kg by 2030e. We believe that robust green hydrogen demand could translate into average annual equipment spending on electrolyser systems of RMB79bn in 2022-27e in China.

In this report, we focus on green hydrogen applications that are the most commercially viable in the next five years - chemical and steel production – with no transportation as green hydrogen is made on site. However, if we look at the even bigger picture, green hydrogen could also find mass application in transportation (e.g. trucks and buses that are powered by fuel cells, which generate electric-power with hydrogen), heat generation (hydrogen can be mixed in with natural gas pipelines and used to heat buildings or water for residential use) and almost all aspects of industry activities that have been supported by fossil fuels. The lack of infrastructure and high costs have restricted hydrogen’s use beyond oil and gas, chemical and the steel making industries, but the economics for broader applications could work out in the longer term.