Zhengzhou has secured a pivotal opportunity to align itself with nationally significant city clusters. Recently, three government departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly approved five city clusters to conduct a four-year comprehensive hydrogen energy application pilot program. Alongside heavyweight national-level clusters like the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Greater Bay Area, the Northeast (including eastern Inner Mongolia)-Yangtze River Delta, and the Xinjiang-Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone, the inclusion of the Yellow River Bend-Central Plains City Cluster, led by the dual engines of Zhengzhou and Ordos, stands out as particularly notable.
Compared to other participants, this pilot spans six provinces—Henan, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hubei—making it the largest in terms of provincial coverage. Among the leading cities in the cluster, Ordos boasts exceptional hydrogen production capabilities, with its Inner Mongolia region ranking at the pinnacle of green hydrogen output. In contrast, Zhengzhou's hydrogen energy credentials appear less prominent when measured against other pilot cities. However, the city has been planning its push into the hydrogen sector for years. As early as 2021, Zhengzhou, as the lead city in a "1+11+5" city cluster, secured a spot in the national fuel cell vehicle demonstration and application program. Since then, the city has steadily intensified its efforts in the hydrogen industry, with fuel cell vehicles remaining a key focus. By 2024, Zhengzhou unveiled its vision of becoming the "Hydrogen Capital of Central China," setting a target to surpass 100 billion yuan in total hydrogen industry output by 2035.
Industry insiders note that while the hydrogen sector remains in its infancy, its prospects are vast. For cities vying for the title of hydrogen hub, this represents another forward-looking bet on the future. Now, with national-level backing and a powerful new ally on board, can Zhengzhou finally turn its dream into reality?
The Hydrogen Capital Dream
Zhengzhou's ambition to become a hydrogen capital traces its roots back to its automotive aspirations. According to local media reports, as early as 2014, when the national new energy vehicle industry was still in its initial stages, Zhengzhou decided to designate new energy vehicles as a strategically supported industry, pouring efforts into building a trillion-yuan-level industrial cluster. At that time, BYD had not yet established a presence in the city, and local commercial vehicle manufacturers such as Yutong Bus and Zhengzhou Nissan served as the primary vehicles for new energy transformation. This commercial vehicle-centric industrial foundation meant that Zhengzhou's new energy vehicle industry was closely tied to hydrogen from its early development phase. In 2009, Yutong Bus began research and development in the hydrogen sector, becoming one of the first domestic enterprises to launch hydrogen fuel cell buses and obtain the necessary qualifications. Zhengzhou also moved early to develop supporting infrastructure, completing the country's third hydrogen refueling station in 2015 and opening Henan Province's first hydrogen fuel cell bus demonstration route in 2018.
By 2019, hydrogen was first included in the Government Work Report, positioned as a secondary energy source with the greatest development potential and a trillion-yuan industrial track of strategic significance, prompting its incorporation into development plans across various provinces and cities. Having acted ahead of the curve, Zhengzhou gained the advantage of securing policy support early. In 2020, five ministries decided to launch fuel cell vehicle demonstration applications, and after a year-long selection process, the Zhengzhou city cluster was approved, joining the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanghai, Guangdong, and Hebei clusters as the five national demonstration city clusters for fuel cell vehicles. In a sense, this provided Zhengzhou's automotive dream with a future-oriented direction. Zhang Cunman, deputy director of Tongji University's New Energy Vehicle Engineering Center, commented in an interview that Zhengzhou's push for fuel cell vehicle applications stems from both urgent environmental constraints and the imperative of energy transition, as well as internal economic development needs. The city holds advantages in complete vehicle manufacturing and demonstration application foundations, while cluster members such as Xinxiang, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Jiaozuo, and Anyang possess industrial strengths in fuel cell stack R&D, hydrogen production, hydrogen transportation, refueling station equipment, and supporting hydrogen components.
Since then, fuel cell vehicles have featured more frequently in Zhengzhou's automotive industry development plans. In the "14th Five-Year Plan for Strategic Emerging Industries in Zhengzhou (2021-2025)," the city listed pure electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, and intelligent connected vehicles as key priorities for new energy vehicle development. The current inclusion in the comprehensive hydrogen energy application pilot continues to emphasize fuel cell vehicle promotion as a key direction. Fuel cell vehicles represent a new, high-growth track within the new energy vehicle sector. According to projections from the China Hydrogen Energy Alliance, by 2050, fuel cell commercial vehicles will reach 1.6 million units with a market share of 37%, while fuel cell passenger vehicles will achieve a 14% market share. By the end of 2025, cumulative sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in China have already approached 40,000 units, ranking first globally, with substantial room for further growth. In many ways, Zhengzhou, which once lagged in the new energy vehicle race, is now attempting to position itself early ahead of the next industrial boom.
The Breakthrough Point
However, the city's strengths in vehicles cannot mask its weaknesses in hydrogen production. Lin Boqiang, dean of Xiamen University's China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy, noted in an interview that across the entire hydrogen value chain of production, transportation, storage, and utilization, the fundamental technical hurdles in each segment have been overcome, and no technical barriers remain for application. The bottleneck for fuel cell vehicle promotion lies in the prohibitive costs of hydrogen production, transportation, and storage, which still require breakthroughs through further advancements in the industrial chain. Zhengzhou's constraint is precisely at the upstream end. The "Zhengzhou Medium and Long-Term Hydrogen Energy Industry Development Plan (2024-2035)" points out that the city's hydrogen industrial chain remains incomplete, with upstream segments missing and in need of expansion and extension. Hydrogen supply security capacity is relatively weak, nearby hydrogen source potential remains underdeveloped, refueling infrastructure construction lags behind, and the hydrogen transportation system urgently needs strengthening.
Zhengzhou has not been idle in addressing these issues. In recent years, the "Zhengzhou-Kaifeng-Luoyang-Puyang Hydrogen Corridor" has been advancing, designed to mobilize low-cost industrial by-product hydrogen from enterprises such as Weiqi New Clean Energy, Henan Xinlianxin Chemical Group, and Jinma Coking within a 150-kilometer radius of the city. According to local media reports, Henan Province's annual industrial by-product hydrogen output totals approximately 550,000 tons, accounting for 7% of the national total, providing critical support for Zhengzhou's low-cost hydrogen production. Yet relying solely on industrial by-product hydrogen appears insufficient to sustain a hundred-billion-yuan industry. In Lin Boqiang's view, the overall scale of industrial by-product hydrogen is too small; to genuinely drive down costs at the production end, large-scale wind and solar power must be leveraged to enhance the price competitiveness of green hydrogen. The abundant wind and solar resources in the "Three North" regions (northern China) serve as the crucial energy inputs for green hydrogen production.
This is precisely where cities like Ordos in Inner Mongolia, paired with Zhengzhou in this pilot, effectively step in as powerful reinforcements. Data shows that as a resource-rich region, Inner Mongolia generated 851.7 billion kWh of electricity in 2025, ranking first nationally, with wind power output reaching 203.3 billion kWh and solar power at 51.2 billion kWh, ranking first and second in the country respectively. Inner Mongolia acts like a massive green power bank, continuously transmitting electricity outward, with exports exceeding 180 billion kWh last year alone, including 90 billion kWh of green power. The scale of green hydrogen produced from this is equally impressive. In 2025, Inner Mongolia's green hydrogen output surpassed 10,000 tons, growing approximately fourfold year-on-year; concurrently, green hydrogen production capacity reached 60,000 tons, accounting for nearly 30% of the national total. More importantly, Inner Mongolia is actively exploring ways to export hydrogen. In 2024, the region issued the country's first provincial-level green hydrogen pipeline special plan, constructing a "one trunk line, two loops, four outlets" green hydrogen transmission pipeline network. At present, the green hydrogen transmission pipeline from Darhan Muminggan United Banner to Baotou city proper has been fully connected.
Synergy and Coordination
At this stage, the question of how to open up the pathway from hydrogen production to hydrogen utilization still awaits answers. In fact, among the five pilot city clusters announced this time, aside from the Yellow River Bend-Central Plains cluster where Zhengzhou resides, the Yangtze River Delta and Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone have been paired with the Northeast and Xinjiang respectively. In Lin Boqiang's assessment, these pairings reflect considerations of promoting upstream-downstream linkage, with the core objective being coordinated exploration of ways to reduce hydrogen usage costs. Of course, the challenges at this stage remain considerable, so the pilot program is necessary to explore feasible approaches, subsequently establish relevant systems and mechanisms, and ultimately achieve large-scale promotion. For Zhengzhou, before achieving "soft connectivity," it must first break through the physical barriers separating it from major hydrogen-producing cities by completing infrastructure connections. In the existing layout of Inner Mongolia's green hydrogen pipeline special plan for inter-provincial connectivity channels, the export of green hydrogen resources is primarily directed toward hydrogen-consuming regions such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Liaoning, Shaanxi, and Ningxia. Meanwhile, for Ordos, Baotou, Wuhai, and Xilingol—the Inner Mongolia cities included in the same pilot as Zhengzhou—the planned transmission channels also mainly head toward Shaanxi, Ningxia, Tianjin, Hebei, and Liaoning, with no pipeline plan currently extending directly to Zhengzhou.
In a sense, the greater distance poses certain obstacles, but compared to the other two paired pilots, Zhengzhou and the Inner Mongolia cities are geographically closer and should logically move faster in their collaborative exploration. This is closely tied to the long-standing issues facing city clusters along the Yellow River. Previous research by Li Zuojun and others from the Development Research Center of the State Council, who studied nighttime light remote sensing data from 2000 to 2020 along the Yellow River basin, found that the level of coordinated development in the region is not high, and the overall economic connectivity has not strengthened over the past two decades. A core issue identified is insufficiently close industrial division and collaboration. Further analysis points out that while the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River basin are rich in minerals, electricity, and labor resources, and the lower reaches boast relatively developed modern manufacturing, the region lacks coordinated planning for industrial development across upper, middle, and lower reaches. Inter-regional industrial division needs optimization, complementarity requires strengthening, and a tightly interconnected industrial chain spanning the entire basin has yet to form. Not only is the problem of homogeneous industrial competition prominent, but coordination between the lower reaches' push for new-old growth driver conversion and the middle and upper reaches remains inadequate, failing to generate a unified force driving the transformation and upgrading of development drivers across the entire basin.
The hydrogen industry is precisely one that relies on regional division of labor and collaboration. Beyond upstream-downstream coupling, according to the pilot program's content, Ordos and other cities will also conduct hydrogen applications in the industrial sector, working alongside cities like Zhengzhou to advance the construction of a Yellow River basin hydrogen industry ecosystem. From this perspective, it is worth returning to the original question: what does inclusion in this national pilot mean for Zhengzhou? As an important central city in the central region, Zhengzhou faces the challenge of identifying new growth points during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period to meet its GDP targets, while leveraging stronger radiation and driving force to build a Yellow River basin economic highland. The hydrogen industry may well serve as a beneficial anchor point for achieving these goals.
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