Why the next energy race is for underground hydrogen - MIT Technology Review

[Caribbeans]

Olivine minerals like forsterite can interact with groundwater, resulting in hydrogen building up underground. Smithsonian

Why the next energy race is for underground hydrogen

Hydrogen can be used in chemicals and as a green fuel. Vast underground stores could help make it an economical option.

TechnologyReview.com | Casey Crownhart | January 23, 2025

It might sound like something straight out of the 19th century, but one of the most cutting-edge areas in energy today involves drilling deep underground to hunt for materials that can be burned for energy. The difference is that this time, instead of looking for fossil fuels, the race is on to find natural deposits of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is already a key ingredient in the chemical industry and could be used as a greener fuel in industries from aviation and transoceanic shipping to steelmaking. Today, the gas needs to be manufactured, but there’s some evidence that there are vast deposits underground.

I’ve been thinking about underground resources a lot this week, since I’ve been reporting a story about a new startup, Addis Energy. The company is looking to use subsurface rocks, and the conditions down there, to produce another useful chemical: ammonia. In an age of lab-produced breakthroughs, it feels like something of a regression to go digging for resources, but looking underground could help meet energy demand while also addressing climate change.

It’s rare that hydrogen turns up in oil and gas operations, and for decades, the conventional wisdom has been that there aren’t large deposits of the gas underground. Hydrogen molecules are tiny, after all, so even if the gas was forming there, the assumption was that it would just leak out...more
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/23/1110435/geologic-hydrogen/

USA Discovers Hydrogen Goldmine Under Lake Superior!

[dem4decades]

1. Trump just declared coal the new "underground hydrogen", start mining.

[Caribbeans]

2. Thanks to idiots like cHump, the US can watch as China becomes the global leader in H2

And if anyone is speaking out to correct this blowhard, I haven't heard of it. Lie after lie, H2 is basically dead in the US for the next 4 years. Very sad. But the opportunity of a decade for China. Like Solar in the early 2000's.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o7xv-f5nkAc

Can't wait to GTFO of the United States of Confusion.

[NNadir]

3. Wow! We're Saved! Even though the planet is burning, we'll bet the planet on speculations from an MIT journalist.

It's worth to read the full article, which is clear that even the free lance journalist, Casey Crownhart, says it's purely speculation.

Casey happily tells us about herself:

I’m a senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, focusing on renewable energy, transportation, and how technology can fight climate change. I’m a regular contributor to WNYC’s Science Friday, and I’ve previously worked as a freelance reporter, contributing stories to outlets including Popular Science and Atlas Obscura. Before jumping into journalism, I worked as a researcher in materials science.

My son is a materials scientist, by the way, which doesn't make him an expert in geology, and I very much think his career will go well enough that he will not have to "jump into journalism," thus dishonoring science with tripe articles. (He is now in nuclear materials science.

I like, of course, some text from the full article by the speculating journalist, specifically this text:

There are so many open questions for this industry, including how much hydrogen is actually going to be accessible and economical to extract. It’s not even clear how best to look for the gas today; researchers and companies are borrowing techniques and tools from the oil and gas industry, but there could be better ways.

Of course, the marketing of fossil fuels as hydrogen as an impetus for our "drill, baby, drill" borrows "tools from the oil and gas industry."

I can see it now: "We're drilling for hydrogen, but WHOOPS, we hit natural gas." Who knew? "Oh well, we'll just burn the gas, and keep on drilling, baby, drilling."

Belief in the bullshit handed out by the fossil fuel industry to greenwash itself as hydrogen, relies on public stupidity, poor education, wishful thinking and delusion. This of course, is a good bet. Afterall, Donald Trump is in the White House again, and "drilling for hydrogen" is a good way to get fossil fuel companies permission to drill everywhere they haven't drilled already.

Hydrogen advocacy is 100%, all of the time, the same as fossil fuel advocacy, in all cases.