Fossil fuel giant Sinopec teams up with solar firms on ‘green hydrogen’ projects to help China on path towards carbon neutrality

The transition to hydrogen energy should help Sinopec weather the eroding competitiveness of fossil fuels as global policy shifts towards tackling climate change

Areas of cooperation include the build-up of a green hydrogen supply chain, and using Sinopec’s fuel stations network to distribute green hydrogen

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Sinopec produced over three million tons of hydrogen from its oil refineries in 2019, around 14 per cent of the nation’s total. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 6:30pm, 8 Jan 2021Updated: 10:26pm, 8 Jan 2021

Fossil fuel energy giant China Petrochemical Corp (Sinopec Group) has sought to join forces with four of the nation’s biggest solar energy players to work on ‘green hydrogen’ projects to help China achieve carbon neutrality.

Through such collaborations, the parent company of listed oil and natural gas producer China Petroleum & Chemical (Sinopec) aims to become the nation’s largest hydrogen energy supplier. Green hydrogen is produced from the electrolysis of water with renewable electricity.

The transition would help it weather the eroding competitiveness of fossil fuels as global policy shifts towards tackling climate change and clean energy technology advances.

Sinopec Group convened a video conference on Thursday with the heads of Golden Concord Holdings (GCL Group), Trina Solar, Longi Group and Shenzhen-listed Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor, to discuss potential collaborations on projects powered by the renewable energy.

“The room for multiparty cooperation in the new energy supply chain is vast,” Sinopec Group president Zhang Yuzhuo was quoted by sinopecnews.com.cn as saying. “We hope to achieve wider, deeper and higher quality cooperation, to help China achieve its goal of peak carbon dioxide emission by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2060.”