Posted on 05/20/2025 5:56:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
Natural hydrogen trapped in the Earth’s crust could power humanity for millennia, and without emissions. A new strategy maps out how to find it.
* Scientists from the University of Oxford, Durham University, and the University of Toronto have identified the key geological ingredients needed to find natural clean hydrogen beneath the Earth’s surface.
* This natural hydrogen is produced by the Earth over millions of years and can accumulate underground in the right rock formations.
* The study shows that the conditions for trapping hydrogen exist in many parts of the world, making this a truly global opportunity.
* Hydrogen is already a $135 billion global industry, used to produce fertilizer and other essential chemicals that support modern life.
* It is also a cornerstone for future clean energy systems, with the market expected to grow to as much as $1 trillion by 2050.
* This new research could help industries discover and tap into natural hydrogen reserves, offering a cleaner alternative to current hydrogen production methods that rely on fossil fuels.
* The findings were published on May 13 in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
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Hydrogen’s Critical Role in Modern Life
Hydrogen is more than just a clean fuel option; it helps feed half the world by powering the production of fertilizer, and sits at the heart of most plans for a carbon-neutral future.
Yet almost all hydrogen today comes from hydrocarbons, releasing about 2.4 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Demand is expected to soar from 90 million metric tons in 2022 to about 540 million metric tons by 2050, so finding a way to make hydrogen without adding more CO2 is critical. Carbon sequestration and renewable-powered electrolysis can help, but they are not yet cost-competitive.
A Natural Hydrogen Solution Beneath Our Feet
A research team from the University of Oxford, Durham University, and the University of Toronto points to an overlooked answer: Earth’s own crust. Over the past billion years, the continental crust has generated enough hydrogen to meet human energy needs for roughly 170,000 years. Much of that gas remains locked underground, untouched and emission-free.
Until now, scientists had only scattered measurements of where natural hydrogen collects. The new study outlines a clear “exploration recipe”—the rock types, temperatures, fluids, and geological histories that allow hydrogen to form, migrate, and become trapped in reservoirs we can reach. With that blueprint in hand, industry can start hunting for clean hydrogen reserves worldwide, offering a potential game-changer for energy and climate goals.
First Principles and the Hydrogen System Blueprint
Study co-author Professor Jon Gluyas (Durham University) notes: “We have successfully developed an exploration strategy for helium, and a similar ‘first principles’ approach can be taken for hydrogen.”
This research outlines the key ingredients needed to inform an exploration strategy to find different ‘hydrogen systems.’ This includes how much hydrogen is produced and the rock types and conditions these occur in, how the hydrogen migrates underground from these rocks, the conditions that allow a gas field to form, and the conditions that destroy the hydrogen.
Microbes, Rocks, and Hydrogen’s Hidden Challenges
Study co-author Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar (University of Toronto) said: “We know, for example, that underground microbes readily feast on hydrogen. Avoiding environments that bring them into contact with the hydrogen is important in preserving hydrogen in economic accumulations.”
The authors outline where understanding of these ingredients is strong, and highlight areas that need more work, such as rock reaction efficiencies and how geological histories can bring the right rocks together with the water that reacts with it.
Crust-Based Hydrogen: Young, Old, and Everywhere
Some sources of hydrogen gas, such as from the Earth’s mantle, have fueled much speculation and hyperbole, but this research shows that these are not viable sources. Instead, the authors showed that the ingredients for a complete hydrogen system can be found in a range of common geological settings within the crust. Some of these can be geologically quite young, forming hydrogen ‘recently’ (millions to tens of millions of years), others truly ancient (hundreds of millions of years old) – but critically are found globally.
Cooking Up Hydrogen: The Exploration Recipe
Lead author Professor Chris Ballentine (University of Oxford, Department of Earth Sciences) said: “Combining the ingredients to find accumulated hydrogen in any of these settings can be likened to cooking a soufflé – get any one of the ingredients, amounts, timing, or temperature wrong and you will be disappointed. One successful exploration recipe that is repeatable will unlock a commercially competitive, low-carbon hydrogen source that would significantly contribute to the energy transition – we have the right experience to combine these ingredients and find that recipe.”
The potential for natural geological hydrogen has motivated the authors to form Snowfox Discovery Ltd., an exploration company with a mission to find societally significant natural hydrogen accumulations.
Reference:
“Natural hydrogen resource accumulation in the continental crust”
by Chris J. Ballentine, Rūta Karolytė, Anran Cheng, Barbara Sherwood Lollar, Jon G. Gluyas and Michael C. Daly, 13 May 2025, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
DOI: 10.1038/s43017-025-00670-1
Yes. They all should rewatch the Hindenburg fire. Hydrogen is a very clean fuel. But it has very low energy density and it’s hard as hell to keep it from leaking. There are serious safety concerns that would need to be addressed
Agree. I've looked into using hydrogen to power a fuel-cell as a backup generator. That wouldn't be burning, but would be clean (water byproduct).
I've thought about it, but it would be too expensive, to have an electrolyzer powered by my home solar after my batteries are charged and I still have excess solar coming in. The idea would be to generate hydrogen gas, have that stored in a tank away from the house (perhaps in the ground), then when my solar inverters need power for the home and my batteries are drained, run the fuel cell to generate power from hydrogen before giving up and pulling power from the grid (which adds to my power bill).
What it would do for me is store energy long term to help get through winter months (unlike battery power which degrades if stored more than a couple of days). But it'd be expensive, and my power bills now already average less than $78/month (for an all-electric house, including charging the EV for 1,500 miles/month).
Yes they would and it would be easy. The product of using hydrogen as energy is water vapor, the number one so called greenhouse gas.
It’s also found in jet contrails, or chemtrails, whichever. We’re doomed!
>> and when you take this supposed pure clean hydrogen from the earth, what are you going to make with it? <<
Water. Don’t you remember the first thing about chemistry class?
That said, it seems like a huge leap from identifying a way hydrogen could be produced to saying there’s 170,000 years worth of hydrogen fuel waiting for us somewhere.
So cool it. Duh.
One word……Hindenburg. If you think a gasoline or propane tanker splodin is bad, the public ain’t seen nothing yet.
and the oceans of the world contain 20 million tons of gold ...
The left would say we are stealing the hydrogen from the humans of 170,000 years from now.
-PJ
Natural Hydrogen trapped under the earths crust is GOOD
Natural gas trapped under the earths crust is BAD
The Hindenburg is BACK, BABY!!!
Strap one on and float down the street! Weeeee..bang.
False, water will be emitted. I'm sure that will be declared a pollutant presently.
Except that the cost is bazillions of dollars.
Truer word never spoken.
“and when you take this supposed pure clean hydrogen from the earth, what are you going to make with it?”
ENERGY!
“If hydrogen is used to power vehicles, there will be a tank in which the hydrogen is kept under very high pressure. Has anyone thought about what will happen when the vehicle collides with a bridge or another vehicle? Will the pressurized hydrogen be suddenly released from the tank? How much of it will catch fire?”
Obviously you haven’t ...
That is because according to greenie mythology there is only one... in the village of Bourakebougou in Mali, Africa. But the details of this are a little sketchy and available almost exclusively from lefty publications...
This is a more a, "I'll believe it when I actually see it." type of situation.
“when you take this supposed pure clean hydrogen from the earth, what are you going to make with it?”
The idea is to burn it to produce heat to drive turbines for electric power generation, isn’t it?
Problem with hydrogen is storage and transportation.
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