Hydrogen supply chains across Chinese provinces for production and transportation

Bi, C., Guo, F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6415-8083, & Zhang, N. (2026). Hydrogen supply chains across Chinese provinces for production and transportation. Communications Earth & Environment 7 (1) e780. 10.1038/s43247-026-03869-2.

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Abstract

Decarbonization involves the wide use of hydrogen for mitigating emissions from hard-to-abate sectors, thus credible economic assessment of its various production and transportation modes is essential. We develop a spatially explicit analytical framework that integrates supply-chain levelized cost of hydrogen analysis with an optimal transportation network. The network optimization model embeds a distance-throughput curve and applies a dual feasibility rule requiring that any candidate transport connection meets both the minimum throughput requirement and cost-effectiveness. Here we show that storage and transportation account for about 20-50% of delivery costs of hydrogen across Chinese provinces. A large-scale pure-hydrogen pipeline network of approximately 59,000 kilometers is projected by 2060 across the scenarios, and the interprovincial hydrogen flows are concentrated along a few corridors linking inland producers to eastern and southeastern demand centers. This study provides a comprehensive assessment of hydrogen economics in China, including supply-chain analysis and infrastructure planning, offering policymakers scientifically supported strategies for energy transition.

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