Earth’s Secret Hydrogen Jackpot: Enough Clean Power for 170,000 Years

Scitech Daily ^ | May 18, 2025 | University of Oxford

[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

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[Tell It Right]

We’re not allowed to have dependable energy. Even if this type of hydrogen were to be utilized, the left would figure out a way to ban it.

[bk1000]

Determined by leftist shills to be untouchable climate changing greenhouse gas in 3…2….1….

[PeterPrinciple]

Yet almost all hydrogen today comes from hydrocarbons,

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and when you take this supposed pure clean hydrogen from the earth, what are you going to make with it?

[BitWielder1]

There is nothing wrong with CO₂.

But by all means, build hydrogen fueled power plants to charge your Teslas with, bypassing the challenges transporting and storing hydrogen, is fine with me.

[READINABLUESTATE]

could

[telescope115]

They won’t ban it. They’ll just tax the hell out of it.

[Red Badger]

Water...................

[Carry_Okie]

There is nothing wrong with CO₂.

But there are consequences, particularly in the rate of accrual of fuels in forests.

[Blueflag]

“Without emissions “

Idiots.

The emission is water vapor, the most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

[Larry Lucido]

It produces poisonous dihydrogen monoxide as a waste product.

[Red Badger]

I’m starting to see how it rained forty days and forty nights in Noah’s time...................

[monkeyshine]

It’s worse than U-235! Remember the Hindenburg!

[No name given]

Like everything else.

[rdcbn1]

The byproducts of burning hydrogen as a fuel produce the strongest greenhouse gas known to man.

[steve in DC]

Climate hoax extremists who push hydrogen as the “clean” alternative...

Well they are either woefully ignorant or they are hypocrites of the first order.

Burn carbon and you get CO2. Burn hydrogen and you get H2O.

The most potent of the “greenhouse” gasses is actually water (H2O) vapor.

Having declared carbon to be the villain in their story book lives, I guess they just have to believe in hydrogen as the solution, as carbon is the villain.

But I had thought that global warming was the villain!

“Shut up!” they explained.

[I want the USA back]

Burning hydrogen produces water vapor, a greenhouse gas. Have these people thought about the effect of millions of cars and trucks running on hydrogen and producing steam that is expelled into the atmosphere and will warm the planet?

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?

[crusty old prospector]

I know of no commercial hydrogen accumulations in the earth. It is such a small molecule that it can only be trapped by salt or basement (think granite). The same goes for helium. The industrial hydrogen is produced from methane.

[z3n]

It produces poisonous dihydrogen monoxide as a waste product.

~~~

DiHydrogen Monoxide must be stopped!
We are destroying the planet!!! It’s getting into the oceans, and it even shows up on dopler radar in our atmosphere!!!

[jerod]

Exactly... If governments removed all taxes from gasoline and other fossil fuels, the cost to fill up your tank would be a pittance.