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Model predictions of global geologic hydrogen resources

December 13, 2024

Geologic hydrogen could be a low-carbon primary energy resource; however, the magnitude of Earth’s subsurface endowment has not yet been assessed. Knowledge of the occurrence and behavior of natural hydrogen on Earth has been combined with information from geologic analogs to construct a mass balance model to predict the resource potential. Given the associated uncertainty, stochastic model results predict a wide range of values for the potential in-place hydrogen resource [103 to 1010 million metric tons (Mt)] with the most probable value of ~5.6 × 106 Mt. Although most of this hydrogen is likely to be impractical to recover, a small fraction (e.g., 1 × 105 Mt) would supply the projected hydrogen needed to reach net-zero carbon emissions for ~200 years. This amount of hydrogen contains more energy (~1.4 × 1016 MJ) than all proven natural gas reserves on Earth (~8.4 × 1015 MJ). Study results demonstrate that further research into understanding the potential for geologic hydrogen resources is merited.

Publication Year 2024
Title Model predictions of global geologic hydrogen resources
DOI 10.1126/sciadv.ado0955
Authors Geoffrey S. Ellis, Sarah E. Gelman
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Science Advances
Index ID 70262506
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Central Energy Resources Science Center
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