Sales of electrolysers in China will more than double next year as the country continues to roll out green hydrogen projects, local manufacturers told a BNEF summit this week.

According to Eric Lin, a board member at John Cockerill’s Chinese manufacturing arm, Cockerill Jingli Hydrogen, about 1.5-2GW of electrolysers will be sold in 2023, up from 600-700MW this year.

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Some of that additional demand will come from projects that were delayed this year due to Covid outbreaks or related supply-chain disruptions, Wang Yingge, a vice-president at electrolyser maker Longi told the BloombergNEF Shanghai Summit.

Longi is planning to increase its annual electrolyser production capacity from 1.5GW today to more than 5GW in 2025, he added.

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Analyst BloombergNEF expects global electrolyser demand to grow from just over 1GW this year to around 85GW in 2030.

The research firm said earlier this month that Chinese electrolyser makers were leading the world in terms of production capacity, led by Longi and Peric (both with 1.5GW) and Sungrow (1.1GW).

Eight of the top 20 largest electrolyser makers in the world are Chinese, it said, with a combined annual manufacturing capacity of 6.7GW. European manufacturers, by contrast, had a production capacity of 4.7GW, with US companies adding 2.6GW.