White hydrogen can transform energy, scientists say

ISTANBUL

For years, political leaders and business executives have championed hydrogen as a way to decarbonize economies, since it can generate the intense heat needed for ships and heavy industries like steelmaking without producing the planet-warming emissions associated with oil, gas, or coal.

The International Energy Agency says global demand for hydrogen could triple by 2050, but there is a major hurdle: most hydrogen must be manufactured using fossil fuels, while less than 1% is currently produced from renewable energy through the costly process of electrolysis, according to a German media outlet DW report published on Friday.

Geologists said that white hydrogen, also known as natural hydrogen, formed through ancient geological reactions in the Earth’s crust billions of years ago, could offer a third option.

"Much of the Earth's mantle is iron-rich rock," Jurgen Grotsch was quoted by DW as saying.

"When it meets with water at temperatures of 200 to 350 degrees Celsius, the iron basically takes the oxygen from the water, leaving behind pure hydrogen."

About 5.6 trillion tons of hydrogen may be trapped within the Earth’s crust, according to researchers at the United States Geological Survey.

While most deposits lie too deep to extract, scientists said in a 2024 study that tapping just 2% of this natural supply could meet global hydrogen demand for roughly 200 years.

Hydrogen, the lightest element, can migrate upward from the Earth’s mantle through cracks in the crust, sometimes escaping to the surface but more often collecting in underground reservoirs of porous rock such as sandstone, where it becomes trapped beneath denser layers of solid rock.

Dozens of companies worldwide are now searching for underground reservoirs of natural hydrogen.

So far, however, only one site, in the village of Bourakebougou, is already extracting the gas and using it locally to generate electricity.

The well produces about 49 tons per year, far less than a typical fossil gas well, which can yield hundreds to thousands of tons over the same period, but it nonetheless demonstrates that tapping naturally occurring hydrogen could be a viable alternative to manufacturing it.