Hydrogen supply chains across Chinese provinces for production and transportation

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. We approve the editorial summary as provided. Storage and transportation contribute about twenty to fifty percent of hydrogen delivery costs, with a projected fifty-nine thousand kilometer pipeline network and concentrated inter-provincial flows, according to a spatial supply chain cost and transportation optimization analysis framework.