The Financial Times has reported on highly interesting findings from the US Geological Survey, as yet unpublished in a peer-reviewed journal, that estimates that there would be sufficient ‘gold’ (naturally occurring/geologic) hydrogen extractable from geological deposits to supply all projected demand for hundreds of years.

As much as five trillion tonnes of H₂ is estimated by the Survey to be stored in underground reservoirs; if only two percent were extractable, at 500 million tonnes of demand per year, two hundred years’ worth of supply would be available.

If it is producible at a reasonable cost, it could drastically change the emerging hydrogen-as-energy industry, and even threaten some planned blue and green hydrogen projects. Dr Mengli Zhang of the Colorado School of Mines is one expert who foresees gold hydrogen being cheaper to produce than blue and green hydrogen, telling the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver that a “gold rush for gold hydrogen is coming”.

A number of companies have already been founded with the goal of tapping into the opportunity – which aside from cost would mean lower land and water requirements for production – although one imagines that oil and natural gas companies would have the most relevant expertise to capitalise.

Naturally produced hydrogen was until fairly recently thought to be relatively rare, but scientists now believe it is produced in volume from the reaction of iron-rich materials with water. Because the geological conditions are typically dissimilar to those in which oil and gas are found, the emergence of gold hydrogen may also change the geopolitical aspects of the energy sector.