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A remarkable study has claimed that a mountain of hydrogen present beneath the Earth’s surface could entirely reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for at least 200 years. The study titled, “Model predictions of global geologic hydrogen resources”, published in the journal Science Advances on Friday (Dec 13), claims that approximately 6.2 trillion tons of hydrogen gas is trapped in rocks and underground reservoirs, which is about 26 times the amount of known oil reserves. The only caveat is that where all this hydrogen is located — remains unknown.
Hydrogen holds promise as an efficient future fuel, owing to its abundance and light nature with governments worldwide are exploring its potential to replace oil and gas. The study posits that hydrogen may account for as much as 30 per cent of future energy supply in some sectors with the global demand expected to increase more than fivefold by 2050.
“The global demand for hydrogen is projected to reach approximately 500 Mt year-1 by 2050 and recovery of just 2% of the estimated most probable in-place resource would meet the entire projected global hydrogen demand for nearly 200 years,” the study highlighted.
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Previous notions
The discovery challenges previous beliefs that hydrogen, being a small molecule, would not accumulate in large quantities underground due to its tendency to escape through pores and cracks in rocks. However, recent findings, including those from a chromium mine in Albania as well as in West Africa, have shown that hydrogen can indeed form substantial underground reservoirs.
“I was surprised that the results were larger than I thought going in,” Ellis said. “The takeaway is that there is a lot down there,” Geoffrey Ellis, a petroleum geochemist at the US Geological Survey (USGS) and lead author of the study was quoted as saying by LiveScience.
Highlighting the advantages of tapping natural hydrogen, Mr Ellis said it would not require a source of energy with underground reservoirs holding the gas until it is needed.
“We don’t have to worry about storage, which is something that with the blue hydrogen or green hydrogen you do – you want to make it when electricity is cheap and then you have to store it somewhere,” he added.
Despite the breakthrough, the biggest challenge remains extracting the hydrogen and making it economically viable so that investors put their money into the venture.
