It has been more than a year since the world photovoltaic leader LONGi entered the field of hydrogen production. In April 2021, LONGi officially announced the registration of LONGi Hydrogen Energy Technology Company, with founder Li Zhenguo personally serving as chairman and general manager.
When LONGi announced its entry into green hydrogen in 2021, according to media statistics, the investment in domestic green hydrogen projects was no less than 80 billion RMB. According to Goldman Sachs estimates, if zero emissions are to be achieved by 2030, the global investment in the green hydrogen supply chain alone will reach $5 trillion. Under the "two-carbon" pressure, green hydrogen provides a sufficiently attractive solution to emissions.
LONGi is already a leader in the photovoltaic industry, but they need to find new growth points, and green hydrogen is the logical choice. According to Goldman Sachs estimates, by 2030, the total installed capacity of electrolyzers for green hydrogen production alone will reach 80GW (gigawatts).
The hydrogen energy industry chain is very long. LONGi is currently only a small piece, that is, to provide equipment, technology and solutions for green hydrogen production, which is similar to the current EPC (general engineering contracting) model of photovoltaic power plants, and provides customers with a complete set of "photovoltaic + hydrogen production equipment”, also known as the “turnkey” model. This is the closest link with LONGi's existing business.
LONGi began to investigate the water electrolysis industry in 2018. By October 2021, only half a year after the establishment of LONGi Hydrogen, the first alkaline water electrolyzer was offline, which means that LONGi Hydrogen already has the delivery capacity.
LONGi rolled out its first alkaline water electrolyzer.
LONGi's development in the field of hydrogen energy is not slow, and its hydrogen production equipment capacity has reached 500MW.
At present, the enterprises entering the green hydrogen industry are still dominated by state-owned enterprises. At present, the largest project integrating wind, solar, hydrogen and energy storage, with an investment of up to 23 billion yuan, is invested and constructed by Jingneng Power, a large state-owned enterprise in Beijing.
For the time being, LONGi just wants to be a "water delivery man". They have successively signed cooperation agreements with energy-based central enterprises, including Sinopec, China Gas, Guohua Energy Investment Company, etc., but the scale and amount of the projects are not large.
Li Zhenguo said to the public that within three years after the LONGi hydrogen energy project is put into production, the annual sales will reach 1.0-1.5 billion yuan.This figure is not huge in LONGi's annual revenue of more than 50 billion yuan.LONGi is not thinking about the present.With the number of players in the photovoltaic industry, competition has become fierce.Even giants like LONGi need to set their sights on new industries that represent the future.