For more than a decade, the village of Bourakébougou in western Mali has been powered by a clean energy phenomenon that may soon sweep the globe.
The story begins with a cigarette. In 1987, a failed attempt to drill for water released a stream of odourless gas that one unlucky smoker discovered to be highly flammable. The well was quickly plugged and forgotten. But almost 20 years later, drillers on the hunt for fossil fuels confirmed the accidental discovery: hundreds of feet below the arid earth of west Africa lies an abundance of naturally occurring, or “white”, hydrogen.
Today, it is used to generate green electricity for Bourakébougou’s homes and shops. But geologists believe that untapped reservoirs of white hydrogen in the US, Australia and parts of Europe have the potential to provide the world with clean energy on a far greater scale.
This would have major implications for the climate. Hydrogen has emerged as a tool in the race to curb carbon emissions. The clean-burning gas can replace fossil fuels in factories, power stations and homes with zero greenhouse emissions.
The catch? Typically, hydrogen is made from fossil fuels in a process that creates carbon emissions (so-called “blue” hydrogen), or by using renewable electricity and water (green hydrogen), which is very expensive. The discovery of natural sources solves both problems.
The size of the prize could be enormous: the US Geological Survey has said that even if only a small fraction of hydrogen under the Earth’s surface could be recovered, there would probably be enough to last for hundreds of years.
During the Covid pandemic, Luke Titus, founder of Gold Hydrogen, uncovered a historical hydrogen discovery in South Australia. Titus was reviewing old documents from the Geological Survey of South Australia which included an analysis of data from local farmers who searched for oil using divining rods.
One borehole drilled in 1921 on Kangaroo Island produced as much as 80% hydrogen. Another, on the nearby Yorke peninsula, was close to 70%. A century later, Gold Hydrogen began to explore the region and plans to begin drilling in October.
The company is one of dozens of hydrogen startups which hope that Bourakébougou could be this century’s Oil Creek, Pennsylvania – the site where the first commercial oil rig, in 1859, ignited an industry that would radically alter the course of human progress.
The burgeoning hydrogen industry’s supporters include Bill Gates. The billionaire investor, through his company Breakthrough Energy, was reportedly one of five backers to pour about $90m into Koloma, a company based in Colorado which is hunting natural hydrogen along the US’s Midcontinental Rift System.
The 1,200-mile tectonic fault running through North America is also being targeted by Natural Hydrogen Energy, a startup due to begin exploration work alongside Australia’s HyTerra in Kansas later this month.
In Europe, which remains gripped by a gas supply crisis as a result of of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, white hydrogen has been discovered in France, in the Lorraine mining basin. And a British company, Getech, is adapting software developed to find oil to locate hydrogen deposits.
The true potential of white hydrogen will depend on the findings from these early projects, says Philip Ball, a research fellow at Keele University and a geoscientist in the field.
“We’re on the cusp of a new understanding but whether this translates into a serious new energy source is a very big question,” Ball says. “Many geologists don’t understand this field. There’s a feeling of ‘well, if hydrogen was there, wouldn’t major oil companies have found it already’? But they weren’t looking for it. Most hydrogen discoveries have been by accident.”
There remains uncertainty over the way hydrogen forms deep within the Earth, exactly how it migrates to the surface, and how best to extract it. The answers will be crucial in understanding what white hydrogen would cost to produce. Estimates suggest it would be cheaper than hydrogen from fossil fuels or water – but there are many caveats.
Oil companies including Total and Engie in France, and Repsol in Spain, have taken modest steps on white hydrogen. There is limited interest from the industry’s largest players, but the results from the pioneer hydrogen hunters could change that. If white hydrogen can live up to the hype, the oil majors could enter the market, as they followed the early shale gas “wildcatters” into fracking. This time, the results could be a bonus for the climate too.
Perhaps the key question is whether the oil companies would be willing to help. Think of a see-saw, says Ball: there might be resistance to helping an industry flourish if its success means driving down the value of multitrillion-dollar fossil gas reserves. But there could be a tipping point where it would become a financial risk to miss out.
“They don’t want stranded assets, but white hydrogen could cannibalise their primary market,” said Ball. “At what point does the see-saw tip?”
