National hydrogen strategy’s “third jump”: can giant pipelines break through a trillion-yuan bottleneck?

Triple jump: from niche fuel to national strategy

Hydrogen has leapt from a supporting role to a cornerstone of China’s energy and economic planning. Once mentioned in 2019 as a complement to new energy, hydrogen was elevated in 2024 into the emerging-industries roster. Now, after the 2026 Two Sessions (两会), hydrogen is being framed simultaneously as a “new growth engine,” a “green fuel” for industrial decarbonization, and a “future energy” for national strategy — a triple-context upgrade that embeds hydrogen into China’s development logic rather than treating it as an isolated sector.

The market blockage: cost, pipes and spatial mismatch

The industry’s promise is big: China already leads in scale and equipment manufacturing, with 2025 hydrogen output reported at more than 37 million tonnes and green-hydrogen capacity over 250,000 tonnes/year. But the sector faces systemic blockages. Ma Yongsheng (马永生), CPPCC member and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, warns of four core pain points: thin storage-and-transport networks, a sharp mismatch between production and consumption, lagging national planning and standards, and an isolated, non-integrated industrial chain. Today most hydrogen still moves by high‑pressure tube trailers, whose economic radius is roughly 200 km — impractical for shipping green hydrogen from wind-and-solar rich north‑west provinces to industrial demand centers on the east coast. Can pipelines solve that problem?

Big pipes, new standards and industrial activation

Beefing up long‑distance hydrogen transport is the preferred fix. It has been reported that China’s first cross‑province pure‑hydrogen pipeline (Ulanqab to Beijing) has expanded from an initial ~400 km plan to 1,145 km and that projects such as Sinopec (中国石化) and Haitai New Energy (海泰新能) are now building thousand‑kilometre pipelines designed to carry hundreds of thousands of tonnes annually. Regulatory gaps are closing too: the national standard “Pressure Pipeline Code — Part 5: Hydrogen Pipelines” (《压力管道规范第5部分：氢用管道》) was published in October 2025 and will take effect in May 2026. If pipelines are built at scale and granted pipeline parity for approvals and right‑of‑way, the construction surge would light up pipe‑making, compressor manufacturing and engineering services across the supply chain.

Why it matters — economics and geopolitics

Infrastructure will determine whether hydrogen shifts from policy push to market pull. It has been reported that analysts expect green hydrogen to form a trillion‑yuan market by the end of the decade if transport, storage and standards are fixed. The stakes go beyond domestic industry: a large, integrated hydrogen network would reduce exposure to foreign supply‑chain constraints for critical equipment and shape China’s role in emerging hydrogen trade. Today the narrative is clear — from highways to broadband, China’s growth has been an infrastructure story. The new “quality‑energy network” (质能网) concept, promoted by State Pipeline Group (国家管网集团) leadership, bets that hydrogen pipelines, smarter grids and multi‑energy hubs can rewire the nation’s energy geography and finally break the trillion‑yuan blockade.