The green hydrogen implementation gap: China’s manufacturing-led dominance, Western policy asymmetries, and a socio-technical roadmap for global sustainability

Global decarbonization relies on green hydrogen for hard-to-abate sectors, yet deployment is profoundly asymmetric. As of 2025, China accounts for approximately 74% of global operating green hydrogen production capacity (measured in kt H ₂ /year), while the US, Germany, the UK, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada together produce less than 11%. This manuscript documents this production asymmetry and analyzes its causes through a socio-technical-ecological lens with a replicable methodology. Synthesizing IEA operational data, a formal literature review, and a bibliometric analysis, we show that China’s dominance stems from manufacturing-scale alkaline electrolysis, not technological superiority, while Western policy has focused on demand-side incentives without parallel investment in production capacity. We introduce the concept of “epistemic asymmetry”—the systematic disconnect between Western research (generated from laboratory and pilot-scale systems) and Chinese operational reality (facilities at 260–472 MW)—to explain persistent policy failure. We present a conditional roadmap for 2030, 2040, and 2050 in which manufacturing scale is treated as the prerequisite for technology, infrastructure, and policy to deliver deployment. The analysis reveals that Western announced project pipelines are 50–130 times larger than their operational capacity, highlighting a severe implementation gap. Environmental trade-offs—water consumption, land use, material criticality (iridium, rare earths)—are addressed within the framework. Without a shift from roadmaps to operational facilities, the green hydrogen economy will remain asymmetrical: China producing, the West deliberating.