氢基竖炉、绿电与零碳薄板：湛江把临港产业链的重量换了一次Hydrogen-based vertical furnace, green electricity, and zero-carbon thin plates: Zhanjiang has changed the weight of its port-related industrial chain once

Minghui

There are two kinds of light on Donghai Island at night. One is the firelight of the iron smelting furnace, and the other is the navigation lights of offshore wind turbines. In the past, they were unrelated, but now, the relationship between the two is being redefined by numerous lines and a variety of process plans.

On October 21, the Guangdong Provincial Conference on Promoting High-Quality Development of the Marine Industry was held in Shenzhen, where Yu Gang, Secretary of the Zhanjiang Municipal Party Committee, made a presentation. According to a report by the China Energy Industry Development Network on October 21, Zhanjiang has set a target to reach a marine GDP of 150 billion yuan by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan, leveraging 21,000 square kilometers of sea area, 1,195 kilometers of coastline, 96 islands, and deep-water ports capable of accommodating 400,000-ton ships to promote the advancement of the marine industry toward higher-end development.

1. Three Projects, Three Carbon Reduction Pathways

On Zhanjiang’s industrial map, three projects this year are particularly noteworthy for parallel observation.

The first is the commissioning of Baosteel Zhanjiang Iron & Steel's zero-carbon high-grade thin steel sheet plant. The core technology of this production line is the combination of hydrogen-based shaft furnace direct reduced iron and the short electric furnace process—using hydrogen instead of carbon as the reducing agent to reduce carbon emissions at the source of ironmaking, and then replacing part of the converter process with an electric furnace. This process requires very high cleanliness and stability of electricity, thereby linking the energy structure of steel enterprises with the city's power supply system.

The second is the full commissioning of the BASF (Guangdong) integrated site. The energy characteristics of chemical plants are continuous and stable, requiring both steam and electricity simultaneously. Their carbon reduction pathway relies more on green electricity procurement, improving combined heat and power efficiency, and electrifying process operations. The commissioning of this site means that Zhanjiang now has a large, stable load and also provides a new outlet for green electricity consumption.

The third is the first unit of the Lianjiang Nuclear Power Plant entering system commissioning. Nuclear power provides baseload electricity, which is an important support for decarbonizing heavy chemical industries along the coast. For industries like steel and chemicals, which have extremely high requirements for power reliability, stable clean baseload electricity is more attractive than fluctuating green electricity.

Three paths lead to the same conclusion: reducing carbon emissions in Lingang's heavy chemical industry cannot rely on a single power source or a single process.

2. The Distance Between Offshore Wind Power and Industrial Load

The grid-connected capacity of offshore wind power in Zhanjiang has reached 1.5 million kilowatts, ranking second in the whole of Guangdong Province. In terms of resource conditions, the seas on the east and west sides of the Leizhou Peninsula have continuous development potential; in terms of consumption conditions, the steel and petrochemical projects on Donghai Island are precisely load centers that require large amounts of green electricity.

This pattern of 'power source and load in the same city' is rare in Guangdong. Most offshore wind power projects feed into the main grid, whereas Zhanjiang has the industrial foundation to consume electricity locally, providing greater policy space for direct green power connections and the integration of source, grid, load, and storage. Information disclosed by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment in October shows that the 501-megawatt environmental impact assessment document for the Mingyang-BASF Zhanjiang Xuwen Dongsan Offshore Wind Demonstration Project is proposed for approval. Wind power projects like this, invested in by energy-consuming enterprises, are a concrete form of the 'power follows load' model.

However, delivering green electricity from the sea to the workshop involves several engineering challenges: the capacity of the offshore transmission system, the access points of the onshore centralized control and substations, and the matching between industrial electricity consumption curves and wind power output curves. Offshore wind power output shows obvious seasonal and intraday fluctuations, while continuous production in steel and chemical industries requires stable energy supply. The gap between the two needs to be filled through energy storage, adjustable loads, and grid interconnection.

3. The Two Legs of Hydrogen: Raw Material and Fuel

Zhanjiang's layout for hydrogen energy has been included in the municipal government's annual plan: promoting the construction of the Donghai Island Hydrogen Energy Industrial Cluster and advancing a pilot area for low-carbon hydrogen energy transformation in the Economic Development Zone. These two arrangements correspond to the two uses of hydrogen.

As a raw material, hydrogen is irreplaceable in refining and chemical industries. News that the second phase of Zhongke Refining will soon start construction indicates that regional demand for hydrogen will continue to increase. The traditional hydrogen production path is fossil fuel reforming, with carbon emissions concentrated in the hydrogen production process; using green electricity to produce hydrogen to replace some gray hydrogen is a direct path for carbon reduction in the refining industry.

As a fuel, hydrogen is beginning to be used in heavy trucks, port machinery, and ships. The throughput and logistics system of Zhanjiang Port provide scenarios for the electrification and hydrogenification of heavy trucks and port machinery. The difficulty of such applications lies not in the vehicles themselves, but in the layout density and operating costs of hydrogen refueling stations.

The practical constraint of taking a two-pronged approach is economic feasibility. The cost of green hydrogen depends on electricity prices and equipment utilization hours, making it difficult to be cost-competitive with gray hydrogen in the short term. The significance of industrial clusters lies in reducing unit costs through centralized hydrogen supply and shared infrastructure, pushing pilot projects toward a replicable scale.

4. Structural Changes in the Port-Adjacent Economy

According to public information, since last year, Zhanjiang has introduced 55 new marine industry projects. From January to August this year, the industrial output value above the designated size in the port-adjacent economic zone grew by 30.7%. Behind this growth is an adjustment in the industrial structure: moving from traditional unloading, ship repair and construction, and seafood processing, towards steel, petrochemicals, energy equipment, and marine renewable energy.

This extension places new demands on urban energy systems. Heavy chemical industries consume large amounts of electricity and have flat load curves, which, when superimposed with the peak characteristics of residential loads, widen the peak-valley gap; the integration of offshore wind and nuclear power further complicates the composition of the power supply side. Grid safety and stability, the allocation of regulation resources, and the responsiveness on the demand side all need to be considered in sync with industrial planning.

Another often overlooked dimension is space. The land resources in port-adjacent areas are limited, and steel, petrochemical, and energy facilities overlap highly with port operations. The routing of utility tunnels, transmission lines, and hydrogen pipelines needs unified planning. Such "invisible" coordination work often determines whether a project can be implemented on schedule.

V. The Energy Account at the Urban Scale

From an urban perspective, Zhanjiang's energy transition has several unique aspects.

The first is that the matching between power supply structure and load structure is relatively high. Nuclear power provides baseload, offshore wind provides green electricity, thermal power provides regulation, and steel and chemical industries provide stable loads. This combination has certain exemplary value nationwide.

Second, there is an overlap in the investment entities of industry and energy. Energy-consuming enterprises participate in investing in power generation projects, while power generation enterprises invest in industrial supporting facilities, and the boundaries are becoming blurred. This overlap helps address the challenge of "who bears the premium for green electricity," but it also brings new regulatory issues — how to define self-use, how to settle grid fees, and how to ensure fair access.

Third, there is the integrated utilization of marine resources. The same sea area may need to accommodate wind power, aquaculture, shipping, and ecological protection simultaneously, making the coordination of sea area usage rights more complex than on land. Zhanjiang's proposed "offshore wind" concept is essentially about generating multiple outputs in a limited space.

From blast furnaces to wind turbines, from refining facilities to nuclear power units, Zhanjiang's industrial landscape is being redrawn. The completion of this landscape does not depend on the commissioning of individual projects but on the intricate connections between energy and industry — a transmission line, a pipeline, or a metering agreement. The transformation of the city is ultimately determined by the quality of these connections.

(Source: China Energy Industry Development Network, Guangdong Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment, Zhanjiang Municipal People's Government public information)

[Research Supporting Organization: 'China Industrial News' Energy and Dual-Carbon Research Center | China Energy Industry Development Network]