Tracking Green Hydrogen Projects: China Railway 17th Bureau Group Pre-wins Bid for 20,000 mt Green Hydrogen EPC Project in Wuwei, Gansu—Northwest China's Largest Off-grid Hydrogen Production Base Commences Construction

On September 15, the list of preferred bidders for the EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) contract of the Gansu Junrui Liangzhou District, Wuwei City, New Energy Large-Scale Green Hydrogen Production Project was announced. China Railway 17th Bureau Group Urban Construction Co., Ltd. ranked first with a bid of 1.542 billion yuan, just one step away from securing the first hundred-mu-level off-grid green hydrogen project in north-west China. The project, invested by Gansu Junrui Weiyi Energy Co., Ltd., is planned to produce 20,000 mt of green hydrogen annually, supported by 56 sets of electrolysis hydrogen production equipment. Upon completion, it will become a core hub for the green hydrogen industry in the Hexi Corridor, reducing carbon emissions by over 300,000 mt per year.

Key Project Indicators:

Scale and Size:The total site area exceeds 5.6 million m² (approximately 8,400 mu), equivalent to 780 standard football fields. It includes 12 types of building monomers, such as electrolysis hydrogen production workshops, high-pressure hydrogen storage cylinder groups, and an intelligent control center. The road hardening area reaches 165,000 m², and it is equipped with an off-grid wind and solar power generation system, directly utilizing the local average of 3,000 hours of high-quality wind and solar resources annually.

Technical Approach:The project adopts "ALK+PEM" hybrid electrolyzer technology, supporting both off-grid hydrogen production and power grid peak shaving modes. This breaks the dependence of traditional green hydrogen projects on the power grid. Through an intelligent microgrid system, the battery-grade lithium hydroxide coupling efficiency exceeds 92%, and the hydrogen production electricity consumption is reduced to below 4.8 kWh/Nm³ (an industry-leading level).

Schedule Plan:Construction is expected to commence on November 1, 2025, and be completed on May 4, 2027. The entire process, from civil construction to trial production, will be completed within 550 days, 15% shorter than similar projects. This is attributed to the prior completion of supporting tenders, such as supervision (won by Chengdu Municipal Supervision) and whole-process management (service fee of 34.61 million yuan).

Regional Strategic Significance:
As Junrui Group's first 10,000 mt-level green hydrogen base in north-west China, the project is located in Wuwei due to the local integrated advantages of "wind power storage and hydrogen"—annual sunshine exceeding 3,000 hours and an average annual wind speed of 6.2 m/s. Combined with the Hexi Corridor's role as a hydrogen storage and transportation hub, the green hydrogen produced will future supply Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, and Central Asian markets. It is estimated that 20,000 mt of green hydrogen can meet the annual demand of 100,000 hydrogen trucks or replace an equivalent amount of gray hydrogen in the steel and chemical industries, supporting Gansu's "14th Five-Year Plan" hydrogen energy goal of "building a 100-billion-yuan-level green hydrogen industry belt."

This EPC tender attracted three central state-owned enterprise/state-owned enterprise contenders, with a price spread of less than 1.1 million yuan, highlighting the market's high attention to the north-west China green hydrogen sector. China Railway 17th Bureau plans to adopt a fully digitalized "design-procurement-construction" management approach, integrating BIM technology to optimize the layout of the 56 sets of electrolyzers and ensure the precision of the high-pressure storage and transportation system reaches the 0.1 mm level. Notably, the project team has already engaged with the Liangzhou District government in advance, forming an 18-person task force to advance 18 approvals, including environmental impact assessment and land use, striving to ensure the first phase begins production in 2027, three months ahead of the committed schedule at signing.

The implementation of this project marks the transition of China's green hydrogen industry from "pilot demonstration" to "large-scale replication"—reducing the cost per kilowatt-hour to below 0.2 yuan through off-grid hydrogen production, providing a new pathway for "local conversion of green electricity" in wind and solar power-rich regions of western China. With technological investments from central state-owned enterprises such as China Railway 17th Bureau Group, Northwest China is expected to form a closed-loop ecosystem of "wind and solar power generation—green hydrogen production—chemical/transportation consumption," offering a "Hexi model" for energy transformation under the "dual carbon" goals.