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While billions have been poured into manufacturing hydrogen the dirty way, experts in Canada found what was once thought to be impossible: a steady stream of white hydrogen.
Last year, thanks to a surge in solar panel installations, the world raved about how renewables overtook coal to become one of the largest suppliers of energy. Not to burst that bubble, but as great as that achievement is, it only reflects a fraction of the reality.
In fact, a little more than 80% of total energy consumption globally, ranging from transportation to manufacturing, is still supplied by fossil fuels. As such, last year’s industrial fossil fuels emissions reached a record high of 38.1 billion tonnes. While total global emissions technically flatlined at 42.2 billion tonnes, many industries are still moving in the wrong direction in terms of the type of energy being consumed.
This is the reason much of the world is pining for hydrogen fuel, because when it’s burned, its only byproduct is water. This is the much-needed lifeline that is needed to transition heavy industries off fossil fuels entirely.
Yet, because it was previously impossible to find a naturally occurring, continuous supply of hydrogen, we started to manufacture it. This is where the colour codes associated with the element comes in.
Brown, grey, and black hydrogen are derived from fossil fuels using chemical separation processes that isolate hydrogen from hydrocarbons. In contrast, green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis. This is a clean process that uses renewable electricity from solar or wind power to split water molecules into pure hydrogen and oxygen as a byproduct.
Here’s the catch. While green hydrogen is entirely emissions-free, the tech remains incredibly expensive to scale. Because it is cheaper, manufacturers end up defaulting to brown, grey, or black hydrogen. Such a compromise means that the production of this supposedly clean gas often does more harm than good.
A recent breakthrough might just change this narrative, however, as experts from the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa came together to publish a ground-breaking study just last month.
For over a decade, these geochemists monitored 35 separate boreholes drilled deep into the Canadian Shield. Throughout this 11-year monitoring period, they found that boreholes were continuously venting hydrogen gas with no signs of slowing down. This discovery serves as proof that the Earth is not just storing a finite reserve of hydrogen, but is actively generating it within these billion-year-old rock formations.
After mapping the chemistry of these sites, they confirmed that deep underground in these rock formations, iron and magnesium react with trapped groundwater. The iron in the rocks then strips away oxygen from the water molecules, leaving pure natural hydrogen gas – otherwise known as white hydrogen – to bubble up through the crust.
On its own, a single borehole releases about 8kg of hydrogen annually. This mine site has nearly 15,000, meaning a massive amount of sustained energy is being continually produced. This is why geologists are so excited about this discovery.
