…there could be reservoirs of hydrogen in the Ely area which could prove to be a boost to its economy

Letter to Editor: Hydrogen, in its pure form, can replace fossil fuels for combustion engines without flushing “dirty” emissions into our atmosphere that add to the greenhouse umbrella. Pure hydrogen produces no emissions, except for a small amount of water.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element on our planet’s surface, but most of hydrogen is combined with other elements such as oxygen that produces water. Water has hydrogen that can be extracted by electrolysis to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen. The separation process that generates the pure hydrogen is not only costly, but often uses polluting fuels such as natural gas to generate the separation. Some hydrogen separation processing is fueled by renewable resources such as solar or wind. Nevertheless, the facilities used to isolate and separate the hydrogen are costly to construct and maintain.

Recently, it has become apparent that there are natural (white) hydrogen reservoirs of pure hydrogen in the Earth. Heretofore, most of the scientific world thought hydrogen was always combined with another element which meant costly separation methods were needed to generate pure hydrogen. The “hunt” is on now to find reservoirs of pure hydrogen using technology similar to what is used in the oil and gas industry, i.e., seismic mapping, satellite imaging and no doubt AI recently.

The search for natural hydrogen has attracted large number of Venture Capitalists (including Bill Gates) and also significant government subsidies. The Administration allocated $9.5 billion plus a generous tenyear subsidy of $3.00 per kilogram for natural hydrogen to stimulate commercial use of hydrogen. Some investors think that retail price of hydrogen will drop below gasoline prices.

The U.S. is behind other countries in the development of hydrogen as fuel for transportation. Transportation represents the biggest source for spewing polluting emissions into the atmosphere. More than ten thousand vehicles are already using hydrogen as fuel. Trucks, buses, ships, trains, heavy equipment, airplanes, and rockets are also starting to use hydrogen fuel. The evidence of the various forms of transportation that are currently using hydrogen means that the technology is developing to provide huge expanding markets for the use of hydrogen plus a market for stationary needs in commercial buildings, power plants, factories, and homes.

The vulnerable national grid system will unlikely be able to provide continuously reliable and viable service especially when the almost 300 million U. S. registered vehicles are expected to change to electric powered vehicles since manufactures have stated that they plan to stop producing combustion engine vehicles. Moreover, it also unlikely that the present 60% of the grid’s power source is from fossil fuels will be eliminated before the expected conversion to the grid because the grid has many and very diverse stakeholders. The use of hydrogen may be a viable alternative for the replacement of fossil fuels to help reduce the possible long term horrendous damages to the Earth and our environment.

Discovering deposits of pure Hydrogen is only the first step. There has to be an infrastructure provided to transport the fuel and to distribute it. It is expected that some domestic pipelines and gas service stations can be retrofitted to accommodate the distribution of hydrogen.

According to Geoffrey Ellis of the U.S. Geological Survey, “If even a small fraction of estimated (world) volume of pure hydrogen could be recovered, there would likely be enough hydrogen across all the global deposits to last for hundreds of years.”

It may take a long time to determine whether hydrogen can become a viable contributor to the elimination fossil fuels emissions, but there is more than just hope because of the large resources of money and brainpower are being mobilized to ameliorate the climate change crisis.

The Midcontinental Rift underneath Ely occurred about 1.1 billion years ago bringing vast quantities of minerals to the upper layers of the Earth’s crust including iron-rich minerals that can form hydrogen. The origin of natural, pure hydrogen is created when subterranean water comes in contact with iron-rock, producing iron oxides, leaving behind hydrogen. The gas can then make its way up through permeable rock and soil to be released into the Earth’s atmosphere or contained in impermeable underground domes.

Ely is likely to be sitting on top of this phenomenon. There could be reservoirs of hydrogen in the Ely area which could prove to be a boost to its economy. Unlike copper ore mining, which can be extremely detrimental to the surrounding environment, hydrogen is extracted by drilling, not with heavy bulldozer type equipment generating a lot of tailings, toxic seepage, and infrastructures. Restricted deep drilling can be done from long distance of a mile or two with horizontal drilling and cause far less disruption to flora, fauna, and surface structures.

Gerry Snyder Ely