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New Energy World
New Energy World embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low carbon technologies.
High hopes: Could south-west Europe be the Saudi Arabia of natural hydrogen?
23/10/2024
8 min read
Feature
Hydrogen is an increasingly important component of the energy transition. But where will we get it? The cheapest, cleanest source may turn out to be natural accumulations of hydrogen underground. One small village in Mali burns ‘natural hydrogen’ to generate its electricity. But, so far, that’s the sole example of real-world exploitation. For now, we don’t know whether natural hydrogen fields are large enough, or common enough, to make a significant impact on the developing hydrogen economy, writes Professor Dave Waltham, Department of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway University London.
There’s a big effort to find new, commercially exploitable deposits of hydrogen. Ongoing exploration stretches across more than 20 countries, from Australia to Spain and on to Canada.
But these investigations are reminiscent of 19th century petroleum exploration – whether in Pennsylvania or Baku, early oil drilling took place near seeps that had been known for centuries. No one had the slightest idea that, in the 20th century, enormous volumes of petroleum would be found in the Arabian peninsula, the North Sea and offshore Brazil. Those discoveries had to await a deeper understanding of how, where and why hydrocarbons accumulate.
Current natural hydrogen exploration is at a similar, early stage of development, as it’s based on the equivalent of following oil seeps.