Hong Kong and China Gas (Towngas) has established a partnership with Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks on Friday to develop Hong Kong’s first electric vehicle charging system using purely hydrogen.

The system, located in Science Park, is expected to start operations in the second quarter of next year, providing electricity to EV charging stations in the park, Towngas said.

The process and system involves hydrogen extraction, power generation, energy storage and electrical control equipment.

Hydrogen with a purity of over 99.97 percent will be directly extracted from the gas network to power fuel cells that can generate electricity for five EV charging stations located in the park.

The gas is also a cleaner source of energy as only water vapour will be produced during the power-generation process.

Don Cheng, chief operating officer of Hong Kong business at Towngas, said the project will show the public that hydrogen can be a viable energy source.

“We give more choices for the customer and then as time goes by, if the scale ... gets ... much bigger, the cost will go down,” Cheng said.

“We only have five EV chargers ... [so] the fixed cost will be a lot, but if I have 50 or 500, then we can kind of like amortize or diversify the cost, spread out to each EV charger.

"So the significance is that let the customer to have a choice to see hydrogen really can be used in public,” he added.

Science Park’s chief operations officer Filla Mak said the five EV charging stations are near public light bus and taxi stands so the public has easy access to the facilities.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan said an interdepartmental working group has approved 27 trial projects on hydrogen fuel, including production and transportation.