Energy Department Awards $20 Million
For Research Into Carbon-Free Geologic Hydrogen
The U.S. Energy Department is awarding the
first-ever funds to research labs, universities and private
companies to develop ways to turn naturally occurring underground hydrogen
into a new source of clean power. Getty
There’s growing awareness that hydrogen generated
naturally in underground pockets across the U.S. could be a vast
source of carbon-free energy. To help make that happen, the Energy
Department announced Thursday that it’s awarding research grants to
top U.S. laboratories, universities and private companies including
Koloma, a well-funded startup backed by Bill Gates that has quickly
become the new industry’s most prominent.
About $20 million in grants are being distributed
to 16 teams, with a focus on developing ways to help stimulate the
generation and flow of underground hydrogen and to refinine
engineering techniques to extract the elemental fuel, the DOE’s
Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy told Forbes. While the total
dollar amount isn’t high, the R&D program is the first of its kind for
naturally occurring hydrogen.
“With funding from ARPA-E, project teams from across the nation will
explore the possibility of accelerating the production and extraction
of natural hydrogen, transforming our understanding of this critical
energy resource while accelerating solutions we need to lower energy
costs and increase our nation’s energy security,” Evelyn Wang, the
agency’s director, said in a statement.
Recipients include the Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Los
Alamos national laboratories, the Colorado School of Mines, MIT, the
University of Southern California, the University of Texas and Texas
A&M. Koloma, one of just four private companies getting grants, has
raised more than $100 million from investors including Bill Gates’
Breakthrough Energy Ventures and is moving quickly to be the first to
drill for underground hydrogen.
Hydrogen’s flexibility as an energy source — it can be used to cut
carbon emissions from steel, chemical, oil refining and ammonia
production, power vehicles, store or make electricity — makes it a
compelling clean fuel. But extracting it from water and other
non-fossil fuel sources remains costly. Geologic hydrogen is
particularly attractive because it promises to be the lowest-cost form
of the fuel and utilizes drilling techniques long mastered by the oil
and gas industry.
“We share the DOE's view that this technology
presents a tremendous opportunity to produce low cost, low carbon,
domestically-sourced hydrogen,” said Pete Johnson, Koloma’s CEO.
“We're excited to work with the agency on this crucial area of
development.”
Additional private company recipients include Eden GeoPower, New
England Research and 39 Alpha Research.
Unlike oil and gas deposits, which are both dirty and finite, geologic
hydrogen is generated continuously. There are different theories as to
how it’s created, but the prevailing one is that it’s a byproduct of a
continuous chemical reaction of heat and water mixing with iron in an
oxidation state. It’s often found near fault lines such as the
Midcontinent Rift running through the central U.S and initial
estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey suggest it’s highly abundant.
Globally, the amount of geologic hydrogen may be “astronomical” based
on how common the conditions needed to generate it appear to be, Doug
Wicks, a program director for ARPA-E, told Forbes last year. He
estimated it could be as much as 150 million metric tons.
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