Many believe that hydrogen will be an essential fuel in the not-too-distant future. I was therefore interested to read about this discovery of a very large natural deposit of hydrogen found in France about 3000m underground. Such natural hydrogen has been termed white hydrogen or gold hydrogen and it begs the question of whether there will be a “gold rush” to exploit it.
Interestingly, less than 1% of global hydrogen production is currently emission free and therefore can be termed green hydrogen. In this case, hydrogen is created by using clean electricity from surplus renewable sources to electrolyse water into oxygen and hydrogen. However, this is a relatively expensive process.
There are a number of other ways of producing hydrogen, with various pros and cons, and each of which is known by a different colour.
Grey hydrogen is produced by splitting methane into CO2 and hydrogen.
Blue hydrogen is produced in the same way as grey hydrogen, but the resulting CO2 is captured and stored.
Brown hydrogen is produced by burning lignite (brown coal).
Black hydrogen is produced by burning coal.
Pink hydrogen (also known as purple or red hydrogen) results when nuclear energy is used to perform electrolysis.
Turquoise hydrogen is produced by methane pyrolysis which results in hydrogen and solid carbon.
Yellow hydrogen is produced when solar power is used to perform electrolysis.
It remains to be seen which precise “colour” of hydrogen may have the biggest impact in the drive to net zero but my guess is that a rainbow of different options will persist, and will need to be combined with other sustainable energy sources, to get us there.
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Could there be a gold rush for buried hydrogen?
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