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New research suggests Earth’s underground hydrogen reserves could meet global energy demand for centuries.
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Major international firms and governments are funding exploratory drilling in Australia, France, and the U.S. Midwest.
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Natural hydrogen could offer a cheaper, unsubsidized alternative to green hydrogen – but infrastructure questions remain.
Researchers from three respectable universities (Durham, Oxford, and Toronto) just issued a paper that lays out a guide to exploring for underground hydrogen deposits and also claims that the planet’s reserves, theoretically, could supply all energy needs for so many years that you would write off the number as delusional hyperbole if we repeated it. (See Ballentine, et. al.“Natural hydrogen resource accumulation in the continental crust”, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment). We don’t know if the professors are right, but any article mentioning such big numbers will get somebody’s attention.
In the meantime, money keeps entering the field, although not necessarily from big names at the Petroleum Club. We previously noted that Fortescue, a big Australian minerals company, bought a hunk of stock in an Australian outfit drilling in the American midwest. We should know what those wells have to offer this summer. Now, three giant Japanese firms, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and ENEOS Xplora (an oil company) have invested in an Australian outfit with prospects in Australia. Drilling is likely to be late in the year. And we should not forget that the French have discovered what they tout as the biggest hydrogen field in the world, and the government just issued permits to several companies, one of which is a subsidiary of Engie, the giant French utility. The activity in France, given the size of the find and the size of the interested parties, may really kick-start the business. France as the Saudi Arabia of hydrogen?
All this exploration comes at a critical time for hydrogen boosters. Manufacturing hydrogen powered by renewable energy is an expensive process. Those big facilities that the Trump administration wants to kill off do just that, and that’s why all the subsidies are needed to kick-start green hydrogen as an energy source. Natural hydrogen may come in at a competitive price, not a subsidized price. Why pay more for the same green fuel? No need for all that equipment to manufacture the hydrogen. That does bring up the question of infrastructure, though. How to transport the hydrogen and in what form? But that question might have to wait until we learn where and how widespread these deposits are.
So stay tuned and watch for developments. This could be the big one.
By Leonard S. Hyman and William I. Tilles
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