In the first half of 2024, various ministries and commissions issued more than 33 hydrogen-related policies, an increase of 15 compared with the first half of 2023, and the layout of various ministries and commissions in the field of hydrogen energy was continuously strengthened. Among them, on January 29th, seven departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, issued the Implementation Opinions on Promoting Future Industrial Innovation and Development, which clearly made hydrogen energy one of the key development directions of the future energy industry, planned to build a future energy equipment system with the whole chain of "collection-storage-transportation-application", implemented the first (set) of major technical equipment and the first batch of materials incentive policies, and accelerated the application and promotion of new technologies and new products. On May 24th, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security issued the "Announcement on Publicizing the Occupational Information of Bioengineering Technicians to be Released", initially determining 19 occupations including bioengineering technicians and hydrogen-based direct reduction ironworkers, and adding 29 jobs, among which hydrogen-based direct reduction ironmaking was the first time that the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released the occupational information related to hydrogen energy.

In the first half of 2024, local governments in China issued more than 140 policies related to the hydrogen energy industry, including 54 special policies on hydrogen energy and 91 policies related to hydrogen. Among them, 14 provinces and cities such as Hainan Province, Anhui Province, Jiangsu Province, Zhongshan City, Yili Prefecture, Shenzhen City, etc. issued medium and long-term plans for the development of hydrogen energy industry, and 26 regions such as Hangzhou City, Chengdu City, Guangzhou City, Baicheng City and Mianyang City successively issued peak carbon dioxide emissions implementation plans, proposing relevant layouts in the field of hydrogen energy. At present, among the 34 provincial administrative units in China, except Yunnan Province, Heilongjiang Province, Taiwan Province Province and Macao Special Administrative Region, the remaining 30 provinces and municipalities have issued provincial-level hydrogen energy industry development plans, put forward medium and long-term hydrogen energy industry development goals, and sort out the development paths of all aspects of the hydrogen energy industry. Among them, the Environment and Ecology Bureau of Hong Kong released the Strategy of Hydrogen Energy Development in Hong Kong on June 17th, proposing four strategies: perfecting laws and regulations, formulating standards, coordinating with the market and prudently promoting. It is planned to submit proposals for amending laws in the first half of 2025 to provide a legal basis for regulating the production, storage, transportation, supply and use of hydrogen used or intended to be used as fuel, and to connect with the international hydrogen energy standard certification model by 2027. By the end of June, 2024, more than 22 provinces and municipalities in China have allowed or explored the construction of green hydrogen production projects and hydrogen production and hydrogenation integrated stations outside chemical parks, and some areas are still studying the inclusion of hydrogen in energy management and making it clear that green gas production does not need to obtain the safety production license for hazardous chemicals.

As one of the important scenes in the development of fuel cell vehicles, "Hydrogen Energy Expressway" won policy support from Shandong, Sichuan, Erdos, Inner Mongolia and other places in the first half of the year. In some areas, hydrogen energy expressway construction was accelerated by temporarily exempting hydrogen energy vehicles from highway tolls, relaxing road rights and planning hydrogen energy expressway demonstration projects, and the cross-regional large-scale application of fuel cell vehicles entered a new stage.

As early as the end of last year, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and other departments suggested speeding up the construction of hydrogen refueling stations on the expressway network and starting the construction of China Hydrogen Energy Expressway; In the same period, the Action Initiative of Building a High-speed Hydrogen Energy in China proposed to speed up the construction of a high-speed hydrogen energy network based on 41 cities, including five demonstration and application urban agglomerations of fuel cell vehicles such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhengzhou and Hebei, and to provide policy support for vehicles operating on the high-speed road network and high-speed hydrogen refueling stations, such as reducing high-speed tolls and optimizing the construction and operation costs of hydrogen refueling stations.