Deep beneath northern Ontario, some of Earth’s oldest rocks are quietly making hydrogen. The gas is not being manufactured in a refinery or produced by splitting water with renewable electricity. It is forming naturally underground, accumulating in ancient rocks and groundwater, then escaping through boreholes drilled by miners. A new study has now provided something the emerging white hydrogen industry has badly needed: years of direct measurements showing that the gas can keep flowing over time.
Researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa studied an operating mine near Timmins, Ontario, in the Canadian Shield. Their work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , documents a decadal record of natural hydrogen production, storage and discharge. The measurements do not prove that Canada has discovered a giant ready-to-use fuel field, but they do show that hydrogen generated inside ancient continental rock can accumulate at rates worth investigating as a potential energy resource.
