A 2025 study from the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, mapped out areas around the country with a lot of potential for buried hydrogen, with Michigan identified as a bright spot. That’s because the state sits on top of what’s called the Midcontinent Rift. It’s where the North American continent started splitting apart more than 1 billion years ago, then stopped.
“This represents, potentially, a pathway for which deep hydrogen can come up closer to the surface and be collected and extracted,” Schrenk said.
This is just another fossil fuel.
Hydrogen, when burnt, produces water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas.It is almost certainly greener than using more fossil fuel. This is an idea that should be explored.
While it definitely looks promising to use hydrogen for the no-carbon benefits, you do still have to wonder about other environmental impacts. What’s going to happen to when the hydrogen pockets empty? Land subsidence could potentially be a problem, so I think more research about possible side effects is absolutely necessary before any large scale extractions happen.
Yup. Unfortunately under capitalism, it’ll be drill now, worry about the repercussions never.
I have the same concerns over geothermal fracking right now. We’re only willing to find out how much we can disrupt the underlying rock by going too far a few times, deliberating over the acceptable death and damage toll, and then deciding to stop doing that whenever ~40% of the country agrees it’s time to stop.
Hydrogen may be a clean energy source, but extracting it would require fracking which is the polar opposite of clean. I have heard of some other cleaner way to extract it, but no idea if those methods are practical.
@supersquirrel first I’ve heard of this. How would you extract the hydrogen without releasing methane and without fracking? Is that even possible.
It’s probably easier to leave it in the ground and invest the money it would take into processes to create create hydrogen from water using just renewables and no other inputs.
