Built on degraded tidal flats in China’s Jiangsu Province, CHN Energy’s Rudong project combines 400 MW of offshore photovoltaic generation, grid-scale battery storage, and green hydrogen production with ecological restoration and fully automated operations.
Rudong County, located on the Yellow Sea coast of eastern China’s Jiangsu Province, is a region defined by fertile tidal flats, a rich agricultural heritage, and an extensive 66-mile-long coastline. The region’s landscape is a patchwork of verdant fields and productive wetlands, bolstered by its subtropical monsoon climate, abundant rainfall, and flat terrain. But over the past four decades, Rudong’s tidal flats faced an escalating ecological crisis, driven by both human development and biological invasion.
Since the 1950s, nearly 40,000 hectares of land (98,842 acres) have been reclaimed in Rudong alone, transforming mudflats into farmland, aquaculture ponds, and industrial zones. The relentless transformation has been compounded by reduced sediment supply from major rivers like the Yangtze, owing to upstream damming and sand mining. It has led to drastic coastal erosion, narrowing and steepening of the tidal flats, and a loss of their natural capacity to buffer storm surges and sustain biodiversity.
At the same time, the region has grappled with a rapid invasion of Spartina alterniflora—or smooth cordgrass—a fast-growing, salt-tolerant grass. Originally introduced to China’s coast in 1979 to stabilize shorelines and reclaim land, Spartina quickly outcompeted native marsh plants, morphing open mudflats into dense monocultures, further altering their sediment dynamics and posing a new threat to the region’s rich biodiversity.
By the 2000s, Rudong’s shrinking tidal flats and the Spartina alterniflora invasion prompted urgent calls for restoration. In 2019, China launched its “dual carbon” strategy, targeting peak emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, followed by a 2020 master plan that prioritized coastal wetland recovery. A 2021–2025 Renewable Energy Plan then sought to elevate hybrid systems—solar, storage, and hydrogen—as national priorities.
As part of the country’s third batch of “Desert, Gobi, and Rocky Areas Mega Wind and Solar Base Projects”—a national initiative to pilot and then accelerate renewable deployment in underutilized or ecologically fragile regions—CHN Energy’s Guohua Energy Investment Co. Ltd. advanced the Rudong Offshore Integrated Photovoltaic (PV)-Hydrogen-Storage Project on degraded tidal flats in Jiangsu Province. The project—one of the first and largest of its kind in the world—envisioned a bold integration of 400 MW of offshore PV, a 60-MW/120-MWh battery storage system, a 220-kV shore-based substation, and a 1,500 normal cubic meters per hour (Nm 3 /h) hydrogen production and refueling station. The Rudong project (Figure 1) achieved full capacity grid connection in May 2025 and is set to generate 468 GWh annually with annual utilization of about 1,170 hours.
To avoid disrupting the fragile ecosystem, CHN Energy’s design team developed an elevated permeable concrete platform system to support the offshore solar array. According to state-owned infrastructure development company China Power Construction, the structure, supported by reinforced concrete piles driven into the seabed, allows natural tidal flows while providing a stable base for the facility’s solar arrays and equipment. It notes that the platform’s open-grid design also reduced concrete use compared to conventional slabs and enabled marine organisms to thrive beneath the panels.
The Rudong project’s 1,500 Nm3/h hydrogen plant—powered entirely by surplus solar energy—is a core demonstration of China’s push for integrated green hydrogen infrastructure. Developed by CHN Energy’s Beijing Low Carbon Clean Energy Research Institute, the facility uses modular alkaline electrolyzers that allow flexible hydrogen production across variable solar generation conditions. According to CHN Energy, each electrolyzer produces 500 Nm3/h and uses nickel-based catalysts to reduce rare metal dependence, enhancing scalability for coastal deployment. Hydrogen is reportedly compressed to 35 MegaPascal (MPa) using corrosion-resistant diaphragm systems from Jiangsu Zhongtian Technology and stored in six 18-meter Type IV composite tanks with a total capacity of 3,600 kg.
The gas feeds a dual-use hydrogen refueling station—described as Jiangsu’s first—to serve both fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen-powered vessels. Additional infrastructure, such as a green ammonia pilot plant, a 2-MW solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), and a hydrogen-powered aquaculture logistics network, have been floated as forward-looking applications though not confirmed in official project documentation.
Valued at ¥5.3 billion ($730 million), the Rudong complex is already being studied as a model for replication across additional coastal provinces. “The Rudong project is poised to strengthen regional energy infrastructure by improving grid stability and peak-shaving capabilities,” CHN Energy said. “It will also contribute to energy structure optimization and sustainable development in Rudong County and surrounding areas.”
Jaak