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Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humankind has dramatically improved its economic productivity and quality of life. The availability of low-cost and lightweight stored energy — principally in the form of consumable fuel — was a major enabler of this transformation.

Unfortunately, much of this energy has been in carbon-rich fossil fuels and the unabated emissions from consuming that fuel has yielded the climate crisis that now, ironically, threatens our productivity and our quality of life.

In the interest of mitigating this threat, we must either transition to alternative primary energy sources or consume fossil fuels in a climate neutral manner. Hydrogen could be a centerpiece of those efforts.

Long range transportation systems, such as aviation and maritime, will continue to require energy-dense, consumable fuels, despite the tremendous progress made in reducing the weight of rechargeable batteries. Hydrogen is poised to play a significant role either as an end-use fuel itself or as a raw material used to synthesize climate-friendly alternative fuels, such as ammonia, methanol or synthetic aviation fuel.

One criticism of hydrogen’s usefulness as a future fuel source has been that making it with low carbon emissions is expensive. Fortunately, however, significant natural sources of hydrogen have been identified in the past decade that have the potential to be accessible at an attractive cost.

This natural hydrogen is produced via multiple processes — including as a byproduct of oxidation that occurs when water comes in contact with minerals that are rich in ferrous iron (such as olivine). Trapped accumulations of natural hydrogen in these rock formations are potentially exploitable, affordably and at scale. Wells are currently operating in Mali and exploratory wells are now being drilled in the United States, Europe and Australia.

Furthermore, research suggests that the naturally occurring oxidation process that yields hydrogen can be stimulated to produce it at accelerated rates from abundant minerals like olivine — or perhaps even from ferrous-iron rich industrial wastes.

For natural and stimulated hydrogen to become a reality, however, several outstanding technical hurdles must be overcome.

A recent United States Geological Survey study suggests that actually acquiring it can be expensive, particularly the practice of identifying areas with economically recoverable hydrogen reserves. These subterranean reservoirs need to have the right combination of hydrogen sources (such as water) and geologic features (such as olivine situated beneath an appropriately shaped cap rock) to enable the formation and trapping of hydrogen gas over geologic time scales.

Once such a reservoir has been identified, it has to be tapped and the hydrogen separated from the other gases trapped underground with it.

In the case of stimulated hydrogen, location is less of a problem, as significant deposits of ferrous-iron rich minerals are already known; the Mid-Continent Rift in the United States and Canada is one example. However, the acceleration of the naturally occurring oxidation reaction is a significant challenge — and an active area of research.

Increasing the surface area available for the reaction via processes like fracking, grinding or milling rock, tailoring the reaction conditions and using low-cost chemical accelerants such as hydrochloric acid, sodium chloride and sodium hydroxide are all being investigated as potential approaches.

Additionally, after the hydrogen has been produced, companies also must determine the best way to store and transport the gas. Synthesizing produced hydrogen into more storable materials, such as ammonia or methanol, may be an attractive option in remote locations.

The recognition of the immense potential of natural and stimulated hydrogen has recently yielded significant public and private investment in the development of both enabling technologies and businesses seeking to commercialize them.

Thanks to this support, companies are developing new techniques and technologies that will help locate natural hydrogen reservoirs as well as extract and separate it from other gases. They’re also figuring out how to leverage opportunities to co-produce other goods, like copper and nickel, or mineralize and sequester carbon dioxide. And they’re exploring how to accelerate hydrogen-making reactions to achieve the yields and production rates that will make such ventures profitable.

It may take a lot more work and a little luck, but these wide-ranging efforts just may give rise to a transformational primary energy source with a dramatically lower climate burden than the fossil fuels it would replace.

Editor’s note: David Tew is a current fellow at Breakthrough Energy, which also supports Cipher.