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I think this is important to note about hydrogen as a 'clean' fuel source: > Today’s hydrogen is “gray,” made by reacting methane with steam at high pressures

I think this is important to note about hydrogen as a 'clean' fuel source: > Today’s hydrogen is “gray,” made by reacting methane with steam at high pressures or using fossil fuels in other ways. Those processes emit some 900 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, almost as much as global aviation. In principle, that carbon could be captured and sequestered underground, yielding “blue” hydrogen. But most hopes rest on “green” hydrogen—using renewable solar or wind power to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen with electrolyzers. _Today_, it is not a clean source of energy for vehicles.

DennisP 4y ago
That has very little to do with the article, which is about actual hydrogen retrievable from underground deposits. It wouldn't be made from anything, just piped out of the ground.
- sigmoid10 4y ago
  While it would still be an upgrade over fossils, I think that would be a slap in the face for renewables. We need sustainable energy production, not more digging for stuff that is limited by design.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    If the goal is to de-carbonize why is underground hydrogen a bad alternative to natural gas and coal?
    - canthaveitall 4y ago
      [dead]
  - chmod600 4y ago
    "Critically, natural hydrogen may be not only clean, but also renewable. It takes millions of years for buried and compressed organic deposits to turn into oil and gas. By contrast, natural hydrogen is always being made afresh, when underground water reacts with iron minerals at elevated temperatures and pressures."
    - hasmanean 4y ago
      The idea that oil and gas come from decaying organic matter is the prevailing theory in the west but some people including Thomas Gold had the idea that they come from the primordial material the earth is made of, and seep up to the crust. If that is the case then there could be vast quantities of hydrocarbons inside the earth. https://youtu.be/lr42BP3wvOw https://youtu.be/lr42BP3wvOw
      - stuaxo 4y ago
        The problem isn't that we will run out of hydrocarbons - we already have enough known reserves to make the earth uninhabitable to us.
        hasmanean 4y ago
        If we can green Mars, surely we can think of a way to green the Sahara. As always it’s the political will that’s lacking.
        cafard 4y ago
        We can green Mars? I hadn't heard.
      - MarkusQ 4y ago
        It's the prevailing theory because there's so much evidence for it. We have good models for how it works, they are predictive, we find deposits at various stages in the process, we find fossils of the expected sort throughout coal fields, we find other bio-markers, isotope ratios, as we would expect, etc. We even know why the bulk of the deposits formed when they did -- after plants had evolved cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin but before fungi had evolved the ability to digest these molecules.
        hasmanean 4y ago
        Somehow I find geologists unconvincing ever since they drove poor Wegener to suicide.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    And geopolitical implications like hydrogen wars.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - scythe 4y ago
    In principle, hydrogen is produced underground when iron (II) silicate reacts with water: 2 FeSiO3 + H2O >> H2 + Fe2O3 + SiO2 As I understand it, this is a "low-pressure" reaction. The FeSiO3 regeneration happens when iron (III) oxide sinks deep into the crust and reacts with silicates, releasing oxygen. I'm not clear on the specifics, but the ultimate energy source is (necessarily) plate tectonics, driven by the decay of uranium, potassium-40 and thorium in the deep Earth. The gross power driving tectonic forces (total underground radioactivity) is estimated with decent confidence at around 30 terawatts; this exceeds humanity's total energy consumption by a small factor (around 2–3), and probably only a fraction of this energy is converted to hydrogen. So using Brian Cohen's definition [1], I'm not sure geohydrogen is truly "renewable" at world scale, but it's renewed at some scale. 1: http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/...
    - amluto 4y ago
      I think it’s renewable in a somewhat weaker sense: there is a lot of iron (II) (and perhaps other minerals that can also reduce water) in the crust, and there is a lot of water, and water percolates and finds these minerals at a rate that may produce hydrogen continuously at a sufficient rate for humanity. More strongly, even if plate tectonics were needed, it doesn’t necessarily take anywhere near 1 TW of power to move enough material to produce 1 TW worth of useful stuff. The energy in question here is chemical, not kinetic.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
    No, we don't. We can also keep digging for limited stuff and use that for cheap energy temporarily, while technology advances and other sources become much cheaper even without research specifically directed at that. That's how today's society developed, except with the side effect that we've also released a large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.
  - senectus1 4y ago
    not really. it would kick start a customer base for renewable businesses to supply.
  - machina_ex_deus 4y ago
    Well then, why don't we stop digging for lithium for the batteries, rare earth minerals for all electronics, metals etc. Where do you think the resources for renewable energy come from? Windmills and solar panels don't come out of thin air. "No more digging stuff" shows such a disconnected view from reality. Everything is "limited" in some sense. The puritan attitude as if you can somehow avoid using resources, is just wrong. And oil is hardly the most scarce resource that's at the biggest risk of running out right now.
    - flangola7 4y ago
      1 pound of resources used to build a solar panel will provide power for years or decades. 1 pound of gasoline might provide power for 30 minutes. Yes they both run out, but one will run out in the 21st century and the other will run out in the 210th century.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        1 pound of uranium ...
        Moissanite 4y ago
        ...and you'll be warm for the rest of your life.
      - machina_ex_deus 4y ago
        The most limited resources aren't what we pull from the ground. Space is the most limited resource, especially in areas crowded with people. Just look at real estate prices compared to oil. It's negligible. Solar and wind power are extremely inefficient in the most scarce resource. Oil can be cheaply moved from far off locations to locations with scarce space.
        Tagbert 4y ago
        Space in general is not limited. The price for the land varies significantly and solar and wind are generally located in the lower price areas where there are not crowds of people.
- Rimintil 4y ago
  > That has very little to do with the article It came from the article.
  - rcme 4y ago
    Yea, but that wasn't the point of the article. > Pumping hydrogen out of the ground should be much cheaper, which is why proponents sometimes call the natural stuff “gold.”
senectus1 4y ago
this is like saying that the knife industry is setup for murders. your statement completely ignores the rapidly developing green hydrogen industry. Those are TODAY sources. just because there are large number of non-clean doesn't mean the clean ones dont exist.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Green hydrogen is not a fuel source. It takes more energy to create green hydrogen than it provides as a fuel, so green hydrogen is a energy transport mechanism, not a source.
  - Kon5ole 4y ago
    We can call hydrogen a source or a transport, but it is just semantics. If we call green hydrogen a transport then oil is also a transport, and if oil is a source then green hydro is also a source. It takes more energy to create oil, gas or hydropower than we get out of it as well. Most of our energy sources are just stored solar energy that would otherwise have gone to waste. The idea with green hydrogen is the same, create hydrogen from energy that would otherwise go to waste. One can argue that hydrogen isn't the most efficient storage mechanism, but I don't understand why it should be dismissed as a source separately from all other storage mechanisms.
  - fortran77 4y ago
    If bursty, uneven sources of energy like wind and solar can be used to produced hydrogen via electrolysis, it could still be a win for reducing carbon emissions even though more energy was used to separate the water than can be achieved by burning the resulting hydrogen. It is a way to store the energy, admittedly at a loss, from wind and solar.
    - ikekkdcjkfke 4y ago
      The market will hopefully decide if it is efficient and not government regulation

DennisP 4y ago

That has very little to do with the article, which is about actual hydrogen retrievable from underground deposits. It wouldn't be made from anything, just piped out of the ground.

sigmoid10 4y ago
While it would still be an upgrade over fossils, I think that would be a slap in the face for renewables. We need sustainable energy production, not more digging for stuff that is limited by design.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  If the goal is to de-carbonize why is underground hydrogen a bad alternative to natural gas and coal?
  - canthaveitall 4y ago
    [dead]
- chmod600 4y ago
  "Critically, natural hydrogen may be not only clean, but also renewable. It takes millions of years for buried and compressed organic deposits to turn into oil and gas. By contrast, natural hydrogen is always being made afresh, when underground water reacts with iron minerals at elevated temperatures and pressures."
  - hasmanean 4y ago
    The idea that oil and gas come from decaying organic matter is the prevailing theory in the west but some people including Thomas Gold had the idea that they come from the primordial material the earth is made of, and seep up to the crust. If that is the case then there could be vast quantities of hydrocarbons inside the earth. https://youtu.be/lr42BP3wvOw https://youtu.be/lr42BP3wvOw
    - stuaxo 4y ago
      The problem isn't that we will run out of hydrocarbons - we already have enough known reserves to make the earth uninhabitable to us.
      - hasmanean 4y ago
        If we can green Mars, surely we can think of a way to green the Sahara. As always it’s the political will that’s lacking.
        cafard 4y ago
        We can green Mars? I hadn't heard.
    - MarkusQ 4y ago
      It's the prevailing theory because there's so much evidence for it. We have good models for how it works, they are predictive, we find deposits at various stages in the process, we find fossils of the expected sort throughout coal fields, we find other bio-markers, isotope ratios, as we would expect, etc. We even know why the bulk of the deposits formed when they did -- after plants had evolved cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin but before fungi had evolved the ability to digest these molecules.
      - hasmanean 4y ago
        Somehow I find geologists unconvincing ever since they drove poor Wegener to suicide.
- _8j50 4y ago
  And geopolitical implications like hydrogen wars.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- scythe 4y ago
  In principle, hydrogen is produced underground when iron (II) silicate reacts with water: 2 FeSiO3 + H2O >> H2 + Fe2O3 + SiO2 As I understand it, this is a "low-pressure" reaction. The FeSiO3 regeneration happens when iron (III) oxide sinks deep into the crust and reacts with silicates, releasing oxygen. I'm not clear on the specifics, but the ultimate energy source is (necessarily) plate tectonics, driven by the decay of uranium, potassium-40 and thorium in the deep Earth. The gross power driving tectonic forces (total underground radioactivity) is estimated with decent confidence at around 30 terawatts; this exceeds humanity's total energy consumption by a small factor (around 2–3), and probably only a fraction of this energy is converted to hydrogen. So using Brian Cohen's definition [1], I'm not sure geohydrogen is truly "renewable" at world scale, but it's renewed at some scale. 1: http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/...
  - amluto 4y ago
    I think it’s renewable in a somewhat weaker sense: there is a lot of iron (II) (and perhaps other minerals that can also reduce water) in the crust, and there is a lot of water, and water percolates and finds these minerals at a rate that may produce hydrogen continuously at a sufficient rate for humanity. More strongly, even if plate tectonics were needed, it doesn’t necessarily take anywhere near 1 TW of power to move enough material to produce 1 TW worth of useful stuff. The energy in question here is chemical, not kinetic.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  No, we don't. We can also keep digging for limited stuff and use that for cheap energy temporarily, while technology advances and other sources become much cheaper even without research specifically directed at that. That's how today's society developed, except with the side effect that we've also released a large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.
- senectus1 4y ago
  not really. it would kick start a customer base for renewable businesses to supply.
- machina_ex_deus 4y ago
  Well then, why don't we stop digging for lithium for the batteries, rare earth minerals for all electronics, metals etc. Where do you think the resources for renewable energy come from? Windmills and solar panels don't come out of thin air. "No more digging stuff" shows such a disconnected view from reality. Everything is "limited" in some sense. The puritan attitude as if you can somehow avoid using resources, is just wrong. And oil is hardly the most scarce resource that's at the biggest risk of running out right now.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    1 pound of resources used to build a solar panel will provide power for years or decades. 1 pound of gasoline might provide power for 30 minutes. Yes they both run out, but one will run out in the 21st century and the other will run out in the 210th century.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      1 pound of uranium ...
      - Moissanite 4y ago
        ...and you'll be warm for the rest of your life.
    - machina_ex_deus 4y ago
      The most limited resources aren't what we pull from the ground. Space is the most limited resource, especially in areas crowded with people. Just look at real estate prices compared to oil. It's negligible. Solar and wind power are extremely inefficient in the most scarce resource. Oil can be cheaply moved from far off locations to locations with scarce space.
      - Tagbert 4y ago
        Space in general is not limited. The price for the land varies significantly and solar and wind are generally located in the lower price areas where there are not crowds of people.
Rimintil 4y ago
> That has very little to do with the article It came from the article.
- rcme 4y ago
  Yea, but that wasn't the point of the article. > Pumping hydrogen out of the ground should be much cheaper, which is why proponents sometimes call the natural stuff “gold.”

senectus1 4y ago

this is like saying that the knife industry is setup for murders. your statement completely ignores the rapidly developing green hydrogen industry. Those are TODAY sources. just because there are large number of non-clean doesn't mean the clean ones dont exist.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Green hydrogen is not a fuel source. It takes more energy to create green hydrogen than it provides as a fuel, so green hydrogen is a energy transport mechanism, not a source.
- Kon5ole 4y ago
  We can call hydrogen a source or a transport, but it is just semantics. If we call green hydrogen a transport then oil is also a transport, and if oil is a source then green hydro is also a source. It takes more energy to create oil, gas or hydropower than we get out of it as well. Most of our energy sources are just stored solar energy that would otherwise have gone to waste. The idea with green hydrogen is the same, create hydrogen from energy that would otherwise go to waste. One can argue that hydrogen isn't the most efficient storage mechanism, but I don't understand why it should be dismissed as a source separately from all other storage mechanisms.
- fortran77 4y ago
  If bursty, uneven sources of energy like wind and solar can be used to produced hydrogen via electrolysis, it could still be a win for reducing carbon emissions even though more energy was used to separate the water than can be achieved by burning the resulting hydrogen. It is a way to store the energy, admittedly at a loss, from wind and solar.
  - ikekkdcjkfke 4y ago
    The market will hopefully decide if it is efficient and not government regulation