00:00Could huge reservoirs of clean hydrogen help us solve climate change?
00:03Hydrogen is a clean source of energy that could one day replace fossil fuels.
00:07Combined with oxygen and fuel cells, hydrogen can produce electricity.
00:10But the problem is that most of the hydrogen today is made from natural gas,
00:14so it has a huge carbon footprint. Every year the hydrogen industry accounts for 2.4%
00:19of global carbon emissions, pumping 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
00:25Hydrogen is used in fertilisers and rocket fuel.
00:27It's also a key component in microelectronics and it could one day power vehicles and buildings.
00:33But how do we get more hydrogen without cooking the planet?
00:35The answer may be hiding in Earth's crust.
00:38It turns out hydrogen can form huge reservoirs underground.
00:42And scientists are looking into whether and how we can extract it.
00:45The potential that's down there is quite, quite large.
00:47And really the question is just is it in accumulations that we could actually economically recover?
00:54That's Jeffrey Ellis from the US Geological Survey.
00:56He and his colleagues estimate there are 6.2 trillion tonnes of hydrogen buried in the crust worldwide.
01:03Earlier this year they made a map showing where we could potentially find hydrogen reservoirs in the US.
01:08It's definitely not anything about what the resource potential might be.
01:12This is just saying this place is probably better to look than that place.
01:17Companies have already drilled several wells to find hydrogen in the US and some have shown encouraging results.
01:22I am optimistic that we will find some kind of accumulation and that there will be companies producing hydrogen at
01:31some point.
01:32You know, what that timeline looks like is really impossible to predict.
01:36Natural hydrogen could revolutionise some industries and slash CO2 emissions.
01:40But it won't solve the climate crisis by itself.
01:43It's never going to be a kind of a silver bullet situation.
01:46The needs of society are so complex and diverse that we wouldn't ever be able to fix it with just
01:52one finding.
01:54But I think it is a promising way to take the edge off or at least mitigate a considerable amount.
02:02Head to LifeScience.com or click the link in our bio for the full story.
