"Climate Holy Grail" subverts traditional clean energy! Underground "white hydrogen" may set off a new round of green revolution!

Hydrogen energy is one of the clean fuels of the future and is also the core of the current clean energy industry system. In recent years, a new type of hydrogen has emerged in the hydrogen family, igniting people's great hope for the future clean energy industry. This is white hydrogen.

Recently, a potential natural white hydrogen deposit was discovered beneath the ore deposits of an old coal mine in the Lorraine region of northern France. The deposit may contain 6 million to 250 million tons of hydrogen, which is one of the largest such deposits discovered so far.

U.S. Geological Survey geochemist Jeffrey Ellis estimates that there may be tens of billions of tons of white hydrogen lurking beneath the Earth's surface, dwarfing the 100 million tons of hydrogen currently produced each year (mostly from fossil fuels).

Although most of these tens of billions of tons of white hydrogen are almost certainly very small accumulations, either far offshore or too deep, finding and extracting just 1% would provide 500 million tons of hydrogen over 200 years.

High-purity white hydrogen discovered in France's Lorraine mining pool

The advent of white hydrogen

As we all know, fields such as aviation, transportation and steel consume huge amounts of energy. It is almost impossible to meet their demand for clean energy with solar energy and wind energy alone.

Although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it can only be effective when combined with other molecules, such as water molecules (H2O). However, the current commercial production of hydrogen is inseparable from the high-energy consumption process driven by fossil fuels, and a large amount of carbon dioxide is also emitted in the process, so it is greatly limited in the implementation of the "dual carbon" goal.

From a climate perspective, the most promising is green hydrogen, which is produced by electrolyzing water using renewable energy. As the name suggests, green hydrogen is the most environmentally friendly, but the current situation is that green hydrogen is expensive and produced in small quantities, so large-scale use is still a long way off.

So, what is white hydrogen, and how does it differ from hydrogen obtained through renewable energy or derived from hydrocarbons?

White hydrogen, also known as "natural," "golden," or "geological" hydrogen, is produced or found naturally in the Earth's crust. It is a potentially abundant, untapped source of clean energy. Interest in white hydrogen has grown in recent years.

How is white hydrogen formed? The current preliminary explanation is that underground iron minerals have the ability to separate oxygen and hydrogen from water molecules. In very deep geological layers, there is no oxygen. Therefore, the deeper you explore, the greater the chance of finding high-purity hydrogen.

Schematic showing how natural hydrogen accumulates beneath the cap rock in the foothills (Credit: Helios Aragón)

White hydrogen has three main advantages over other types of hydrogen.

First, it is a form of hydrogen that does not emit carbon dioxide. Second, it does not require large amounts of renewable energy to produce through water electrolysis. The third advantage is that it comes from natural geological and chemical phenomena and can therefore be mined endlessly at low cost. This hydrogen in gaseous form contains three times more energy than oil.

Against this backdrop, the industry generally believes that white hydrogen is the cleanest and relatively cost-effective renewable hydrogen, which is expected to reshape the energy landscape and usher in a new round of green revolution.

A new competition quietly begins

As people's understanding of white hydrogen gradually deepens, countries around the world are competing to participate in the exploration of white hydrogen. In addition to France, white hydrogen deposits have been discovered in countries and regions including Mali, the United States, Russia, Australia, Oman and Eastern Europe.

Among them, Mali is currently the only country in the world that is currently mining white hydrogen, and the mining well is located about 60 kilometers northwest of the capital Bamako. According to Mali's wells, the production cost of white hydrogen is about $1 per kilogram, while the production cost of green hydrogen is about $6 per kilogram. However, if a large number of mineral deposits require deeper drilling, the cost of white hydrogen development may rise.

Currently, Korama, a white hydrogen startup headquartered in Denver, USA, has received $91 million in investment, including funds from Breakthrough Energy Ventures founded by Bill Gates.

Another company, Natural Hydrogen Energy, founded by geochemist Vyacheslav Zygannik, completed a hydrogen exploration drilling in Nebraska in 2019 and plans to develop new drilling. This project is very close to the world's first commercial white hydrogen.

The role of hydrogen in net-zero emissions

Could white hydrogen be the key to safe, clean energy? And why is it only just being explored?

Isabel Moretti, a scientific researcher and white hydrogen expert at the University of Pau in France, said: "The problem now is not the reserves, but the funds and technology." As all countries are in the early stages of white hydrogen mining, the problems that white hydrogen mining will face and the technological innovations required are still being explored in the development process. It is worth mentioning that white hydrogen has not yet been discovered in China.

Can the white hydrogen buried under the earth's crust meet the energy needs of the entire planet? The answer may be revealed in the near future.