Beijing’s municipal government plans to have more than 12,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on its roads and build more than 40 hydrogen refuelling stations by 2030, as part of China’s efforts to promote hydrogen as a strategic energy carrier to strengthen energy security under a national pilot programme.

The targets, set out in a five-year plan for the capital city’s hydrogen industry released on Friday, focus on expanding the use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in road transport, including long-haul freight, urban delivery and passenger transport.

To accelerate adoption, Beijing plans to cut the costs of fuel cell vehicles and key components by more than 30 per cent by supporting leading manufacturers in strengthening their supply chains.

Beyond transport, the city of Beijing also plans to expand hydrogen use in industrial applications. It aims to promote the replacement of conventional chemical feedstocks with hydrogen-based alternatives in refining processes at petrochemical companies and to fully replace hydrogen produced from fossil fuels with green hydrogen. The move is expected to reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by more than 300,000 tonnes.

Beijing’s latest city-level application plan comes as China seeks to expand the use of hydrogen through a four-year regional pilot programme.

In August, the central government announced five major economic regions selected to pilot the wider use of hydrogen across different sectors. They include the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area and the Yangtze River Delta, anchored by Shanghai.

The Chinese government is increasingly positioning hydrogen as a critical energy source that could strengthen energy resilience amid global geopolitical uncertainties and help the country meet its 2030 carbon peak goal.

In the 2026-30 five-year plan, China identified hydrogen as a “future industry” and called for the safe and orderly replacement of fossil fuels with non-fossil energy sources.

This built on a 2022 national strategy that designated hydrogen as a “strategic emerging industry” and set out a development framework to increase its use through 2035. With the pilot regions now designated, local governments are beginning to set concrete targets for the initiative.

According to Beijing’s Friday road map, the city aims to grow its hydrogen industry chain to over 40 billion yuan (US$6.02 billion) by 2030, propelling the total value in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region over 100 billion yuan.

At a meeting convened by the Guangzhou municipal government in late September, officials set a target of having more than 16,000 fuel cell vehicles on the road and building 100 additional hydrogen refuelling stations across the Greater Bay Area.

In October, Shanghai pledged to take the lead in strengthening cooperation with regions such as Jilin and Inner Mongolia autonomous region, in order to expand upstream green hydrogen production by tapping their abundant wind and solar resources, while promoting downstream applications in the Yangtze River Delta, with a goal to have 2,124 fuel cell vehicles and to build 21 new hydrogen refuelling stations.

China had around 32,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road as of 2025, according to official data released in August. The country also accounted for more than 50 per cent of global renewable hydrogen production capacity.