The map showing areas of the US that, on the one hand, have little chance of harboring hydrogen reserves (from white to light blue); and, on the other, those that are likely to harbor hydrogen reserves (from blue to dark blue).
Massive reserves of “golden” hydrogen could be hidden beneath at least 30 US states, the first map of its kind reveals.
Last Thursday, it was U.S. Geological Survey a never-before-seen map of the United States that shows the likely locations of huge natural hydrogen reserves.
The map is “first-of-its-kind” because it is the first to show the possible locations of hydrogen on such a large scale, marking areas where hydrogen gas could be lurking beneath the surface in quantities large enough to be extracted.
The researchers who created the map said, in , that they already suspected there might be more hydrogen buried in the Earth’s crust than scientists previously thought. But they never imagined it would be on this scale.
The map shows that at least 30 states of the USA have the necessary conditions for hydrogen to accumulate underground. There is a high potential for the gas to be found in large areas of the Midwest, as well as in areas along the California coast and the East Coast, the team specifies.
“This map is tempting because it shows that several parts of the USA may, after all, have an underground hydrogen resource”, he praised, to , Sarah Rykerassociate director for energy and mineral resources at U.S. Geological Surveywho did not participate in the research.
According to projections by the same researchers, hydrogen could represent up to 30% of future energy supply in some sectors, and demand is likely to increase fivefold by 2050.
In a study last month, in Science Advances and cited by Live Science, researchers calculated that the total reserves of hydrogen buried in the Earth could reach 6.2 trillion tons of gas – of which just 2% would provide the energy needed to power the world for 200 years.
However, this estimate did not indicate the location of these reserves, which determines whether they are accessible and therefore extractable.
