The “fairy circles”, like these in Namibia, can form when the hydrogen causes the earth to rise and then sink
Natural “White Hydrogen” JAZ in vast reservoirs under our feet – now the Gold Race of the Age of Clean Energy is starting.
Investors had lost their faith in the obsessive search of Edwin Drake for oil when the American entrepreneur finally found black gold in an underground reservoir in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. The discovery triggered a frenzy of exploration that began the modern age of oil.
Now a new generation of explorers is running to replicate that moment of Titusville, hoping to bring out the emergence of a new and important source of energy. However, they are not fossil fuels they are looking for, but a commercially viable source of natural hydrogen – and low carbon.
Hydrogen, the smallest, simple and lighter molecule on Earth, is currently used mainly in the refinement and chemistry industries, such as fertilizer ammonia production. The vast majority of this hydrogen is produced from the pollutant methane gas or charcoal gasification.
But there are already other ways to produce hydrogen with lower carbon emission. And the capacity of the hydrogen of Store three times more energy than oil, producing only water when burned, made some see it as an attractive option of clean fuel, especially for industries that are difficult to decarbonize by electrification, such as aviation, maritime transport or steel production.
“Green” hydrogen, for example, is a cleaner alternative, produced by the division of water between hydrogen and oxygen molecules in a renewable energy -powered process. “Blue” hydrogen, made from fossil fuels using carbon capture and storage to reduce emissions, is another alternative.
“It’s more or less a race“Says. Gaucher left his job in the total oil giant four years ago and now drives an independent consultant who advises companies“ who want to gain the race to natural hydrogen. ”Exploratory perforations, he notes, have already occurred in Australia and the US.
Prospectors like Gaucher argue that the discovery of a commercially viable hydrogen reservoir can inaugurate a new era of exploitation. “Hope is to make a great discovery in the next three or four years,” he says. “My dream is that this natural hydrogen can play a role, perhaps as oil has played in the past.”
Still, Gaucher admits that miners should be “modest” as to the potential role of white hydrogen in the energy transition. Even because it still There are huge uncertainties How much of it may be really recoverable from the earthly cloak.
“We currently have no idea,” says Ellis of USGS. “This is the big question. From what we know today, there is a lot of uncertainty to really make any prediction about the impact that [o hidrogénio natural] You can have. ”
The only place where the white hydrogen extracted from Earth is currently used is in the village of Bourakebougou in western Mali. The fate of the local community changed in 1987, when the cigarette of a worker who was digging a well of water caused a small explosion when it leaned over the edge. The almost pure hydrogen was found later at the bottom of the well. It is currently used to produce electricity for the village.
Odorless, colorless and insipid, the Hydrogen is difficult to detect without looking for it specifically. But at the beginning of 2025, a team of geologists announced having found a clue about where to start looking.
Using plaque tectonic process simulations, they showed that rocks that were pushed closer to the surface during mountain formation could be critical points for white hydrogen. The investigators identified mountainous chains that extend from the Alps to the Himalayas as possible targets for exploration.
Other researchers in the United Kingdom and Canada recently published a list of key ingredients needed to find hydrogen-producing underground systems. “We know, for example, that underground microbes easily feed on hydrogen,” said study co -author Barbara Sherwood Lollar, professor of geology at the University of Toronto in a statement. “Avoiding environments that put them in contact with hydrogen is important to preserve hydrogen in economic accumulation.”
Although white hydrogen exploration is gaining strength, commercially viable wells have not yet been found. In its global hydrogen review of 2024, AIE described the white hydrogen production technology as having a score of five in nine in its scale of technological readiness.
There is also insufficient evidence to prove that white hydrogen is a renewable resource for large -scale use, says Laurent Truche, professor of geochemistry at Grenoble Alps University in France, who investigates natural hydrogen. This is because it is not clear if hydrogen is generated with sufficient speed to replace what can be extracted from reservoirs. Truche states that the rate of hydrogen generation is “several orders of greatly slow magnitude compared to what we would expect to produce.”
It is concerned with the exaggeration, noting that “the production of natural hydrogen is currently tiny, the Hydrogen found is rarely pure And many discoveries are dissolved gas, which is difficult to produce. ”
But white hydrogen extraction can also have unintentional consequences, including climate impacts that may nullify some of the benefits of replacement of fossil fuels.
Hydrogen reservoirs may contain methanewhich could nullify the benefits of white hydrogen unless it was captured. In addition, once in the atmosphere, hydrogen competes with hydroxyl methane, a compound that breaks down methane molecules. This means that any hydrogen that escapes during extraction would also cause methane in the atmosphere to last longer and cause even more heating.
These methane emissions, along with the emissions incorporated into the drilling infrastructure, mean that the production of white hydrogen It would not be totally carbon -free.
White hydrogen advocates state the BBC that methane emissions can be filtered, while extraction and hydrogen burning as fuel would reduce the amount that is naturally escaped to the surface and reaches the atmosphere.
But Truche disagrees. Large -scale white hydrogen production would lead to greater hydrogen escape to the atmosphere, he says. You can also impact underground ecosystems And the microbial life that depends on hydrogen as a source of energy, he adds. These microbes play an important role in the cycle of Earth’s chemical elements and compounds – although it is relatively little about deep terrestrial subsoil, according to a scientific review by Rachel Beaver and Josh Neufeld of the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Zgonnik is optimistic that white hydrogen can provide “the missing link” To decarbonize sectors that are difficult to reduce, starting with the fertilizer industry. Still, even in the best scenario, it estimates that white hydrogen can replace “only a few percent” of the global use of fossil fuels by 2050.
But others, like Truche, argue that it is too early to determine which role, if any, that white hydrogen can play in the energy transition. If the replacement of extractable hydrogen reservoirs exists underground “is a genuinely scientific issue,” he says. “But you still need to be proven.”
