Pierre Louvin, CEO of the Canadian company Vema, has emphasized the potential of white hydrogen for carbon reduction in various industries. This type of hydrogen, known as geological hydrogen, can bypass the main barriers to hydrogen use and help its scalability without a significant increase in carbon footprint.
Capacity of White Hydrogen
White hydrogen refers to natural hydrogen resources found in rocks and other deposits in the Earth's crust. Louvin stated in an interview, "There is tremendous potential; such rocks can be found all over the world that are sufficient to produce billions of tons of hydrogen." This type of hydrogen is very useful in heavily polluting industries such as steelmaking and transportation, as it can be burned at high temperatures and produces only water vapor as a byproduct.
Challenges and Opportunities
However, most of the currently produced hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, which raises questions about its effectiveness as a tool for carbon reduction. In 2023, less than one-tenth of planned green hydrogen projects have come to fruition. According to a study, only 7% of announced global capacities were completed on time.
Recent research from the universities of Oxford, Durham, and Toronto indicates that hydrogen produced in the continental crust of the Earth has an energy equivalent to approximately 170,000 years of current global oil consumption. However, it is still unclear how much of these resources are recoverable.
Extracting and refining hydrogen in an environmentally and economically efficient manner requires a complex network of factors. Geologists are working to identify a comprehensive system for hydrogen extraction, which includes production sources, migration pathways, reservoir formations, and geological traps that can accumulate significant amounts of H2 over time.
With the increasing number of startups striving to optimize this process, it seems that geological hydrogen hotspots will emerge globally in the near future.
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