Hydrogen is already a $135‑billion global industry, powering fertilizer, steel, and methanol, and with it, the world’s food security. But most of today’s Hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, releasing carbon pollution along the way. Even “green hydrogen” made from renewables is costly and hard to store.
Enter white Hydrogen, natural Hydrogen seeping from Earth’s crust. Until now, it was mostly a curiosity for microbiologists and astrobiologists. But a new University of Toronto‑led study has, for the first time, documented large, long‑lasting discharges of natural Hydrogen, suggesting it could one day fuel industries without the heavy carbon footprint.
Now, for the first time, geochemists at the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa have discovered white Hydrogen in billion-year-old Canadian Shield rock. The discovery points to a potential new energy source.
At a mine near Timmins, Ontario, scientists found that each borehole quietly leaks about 8 kilograms of Hydrogen a year, roughly the weight of a car battery, and keeps doing so for a decade or more.
Multiply that by the site’s 15,000 boreholes, and the trickle becomes a torrent: more than 140 tonnes of Hydrogen annually, enough to generate 4.7 million kilowatt‑hours of energy. Put simply, one mine could power over 400 homes for a year just from natural Hydrogen seeping out of the ground.
Credit
Courtesy of Barbara Sherwood Lollar
Lead author and University Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar said, “The data from this study suggest there are critical untapped opportunities to access a domestic source of cost-effective energy produced from the rocks beneath our feet. What’s more, this provides a ‘made in Canada’ resource that might be able to support local and regional industry hubs and reduce their dependence on importing hydrocarbon-based fuels.”
Canada may be sitting on a hidden energy advantage: natural Hydrogen locked in the same rocks that hold nickel, copper, diamonds, and other critical minerals. Researchers say this Hydrogen could be tapped as a cheaper, cleaner alternative to industrial Hydrogen, without relying on fossil fuels.
“The common link is the rock,” explains Oliver Warr of the University of Ottawa. “Natural Hydrogen is produced in the same rocks where Canada’s nickel, copper, and diamond deposits are found… The co‑location of mining resources and hydrogen production and use mitigates the need for long transportation routes to market, for hydrogen storage, and major hydrogen infrastructure development.”
Such a resource could reduce costs and carbon emissions for mines while also supplying local clean energy to northern communities where fuel transport is expensive.
“There is a global race to increase hydrogen availability to decarbonize and reduce the costs of the existing hydrogen economy,” adds Sherwood Lollar. “We now have a better understanding of the economic viability of this resource that can be mapped to hydrogen deposits around the world that are both already known and yet to be discovered.”
Journal Reference:
- Barbara Sherwood Lollar and Oliver Warr. Decadal record of continental H2 reservoirs reveals potential for subsurface microbial life and natural H2 exploration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2603895123