One of China's busiest ports to run operations on hydrogen — but no promise to use green H2
A wide-ranging plan to use H2 vehicles and cranes is vague on how it will source the fuel
Qingdao Port in China — one of the busiest in the world by cargo handled — has launched the construction of a “zero-carbon” terminal, with an ambition to use hydrogen across its operations.
Qingdao Port’s parent logistics group, Shandong Port, has already put 50 hydrogen vehicles into operation across its ports since 2019, with a cumulative mileage of 800,000km, as well as a tonne-per-day H2 refuelling station.
Similarly, Shandong Port has trialled a hybrid rail crane which runs on both direct electricity and a hydrogen fuel cell, as well as a hybrid hydrogen-electric tugboat.
A government press release suggests that Qingdao Port will demonstrate a similar breadth of different H2 applications across vehicles, vessels and machinery.
However, no mention is made of how exactly the port operator will source H2 for its operations. This could imply that the hydrogen may come from fossil sources without carbon capture or storage, such as steam methane reforming or coal gasification.
The majority of China’s hydrogen is produced from coal gasification, the most carbon-intensive method that exists, resulting in around 20kg of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) per kilogram of H2.
Grey hydrogen produced from unabated natural gas meanwhile is estimated to have a carbon intensity of 10-14kgCO2e/kgH2.
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