A developer of a “white” hydrogen production technology announced Tuesday that it has completed two pilot wells in Quebec, a move that could advance large-scale hydrogen production from subsurface rock formations.
The Quebec pilot is the first field deployment of Vema Hydrogen’s Engineered Mineral Hydrogen (EMH) technology and, according to the company, a significant development on its route toward tapping into a gigawatt-scale hydrogen supply that can attract and power high-value industries, support regional growth, and redefine what’s possible for decarbonization in North America.
The completion of the pilot wells comes on the heels of Vema’s December announcement of a hydrogen purchase and sale agreement with Verne, a provider of on-site power and cooling solutions for data centers. Through that agreement, Vema’s clean hydrogen will be leveraged by Verne to provide affordable, reliable, and low-emission power to its data center customers, with operations beginning as early as 2028.
“Natural hydrogen is a critical element rapidly emerging as the first new primary energy source in decades,” said Ran Narayanasamy, CEO of MAX Power Mining, a natural hydrogen exploration company in Saskatchewan, Canada.
“All the hydrogen that is used today, in a growing demand environment, is manufactured,” he told TechNewsWorld. “The advantage with natural hydrogen is that it’s cleaner and more cost-effective. It’s coming directly from the subsurface.”
The broader promise of Vema’s approach depends on how natural hydrogen compares with existing production methods.
Not All H Equal
Vema CEO Pierre Levin explained that hydrogen is the only source of energy that releases water and no carbon dioxide when burned. “If you want to decarbonize seriously, you need a lot of hydrogen,” he told TechNewsWorld.
“We need billions of tons of hydrogen per year,” he continued, “and the only way to do that at scale is to make hydrogen from rock, because all other options are either not environmentally friendly, like gray or blue hydrogen, or expensive like green hydrogen.”
Hydrogen production spans a color spectrum, from black and brown made from coal, to gray and blue from natural gas, to green produced by electrolyzing water with renewable power, to white extracted from subsurface geological deposits. There’s also turquoise, produced via methane pyrolysis; pink, purple, and red, produced via nuclear-powered processes; and yellow, produced via grid-powered electrolysis.
“Not all hydrogen is created equal,” Narayanasamy said. “99% of hydrogen is manufactured as emissions-emitting energy produced through fossil fuels. One percent of hydrogen is ‘green’ but requires expensive technologies and relies on wind and solar.”
“Natural hydrogen is the cleanest form,” he continued. “It is low-cost, and the end product is right under our feet. As natural hydrogen exists in an end product form under the ground, costly technological processes involved in manufactured hydrogen are eliminated from the process.”
Levin estimates that it will cost Vema less than a dollar to produce a kilogram of hydrogen. “Why is that number important?” he asked. “Because if we can produce at that price, we can compete with fossil fuels and make a ton of money.”
Big Deal for Planet
Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at the Enderle Group, an advisory services firm in Bend, Ore., agreed that the equipment and energy costs of manufacturing hydrogen can be high. “It is less expensive and potentially greener to mine hydrogen than it is to manufacture it,” he told TechNewsWorld.
“Granted, with enough green energy — solar, wind, geothermal, atomic — you could manufacture hydrogen sustainably,” he conceded, “but the initial hardware cost would be excessive.”
“If the subsurface can deliver a steady hydrogen flow, you skip the giant electricity bill and turn hydrogen into something closer to a fuel reserve than a manufactured product,” added Mark N. Vena, the president and principal analyst at SmartTech Research, a technology advisory firm in Las Vegas.
“Vema’s Quebec pilot wells aim to prove that idea at scale by producing baseload hydrogen from rock formations, not from a factory,” he told TechNewsWorld. “This could be a big deal for the planet.”
He explained that most hydrogen today comes from fossil-based pathways such as steam methane reforming, which is cheap but carbon-intensive unless carbon dioxide is captured; even then, you still rely on gas supply chains.
“Electrolysis can be low carbon, but the economics swing hard with power prices and electrolyzer capex, which is why scale-up stays constrained in many markets,” he continued.
“Geologic hydrogen tries to flip the model,” he added, “by sourcing hydrogen generated and stored in the crust, potentially lowering cost while keeping supply steady.”
Mining Challenges
Vena noted that the challenges for hydrogen miners are not trivial. “You have to find it, then you have to prove it flows consistently, which is the difference between a science project and an energy business,” he said.
“Subsurface uncertainty is real, including variable reservoir behavior and the need to manage risks like water impacts and induced seismicity from industrial operations,” he continued.
“The industry also lacks mature standards for exploration, measurement, and classification, so each pilot is writing part of the playbook,” he added. Moving hydrogen can also be problematic. “Hydrogen comes with the challenge that it is very light,” noted Rick Bentley, CEO of HydroHash, a crypto mining company that focuses on clean energy and high-efficiency operations, in Albuquerque, N.M.
“It’s just one proton and one electron, literally the lightest element on the periodic table,” he told TechNewsWorld. “In gas form, there just isn’t much mass in a tank. In liquid form, the energy density per weight is reasonably high, but the energy density per volume is still poor compared to natural or propane gases, in their liquid forms, with their relatively heavy carbon molecules.”
Bentley added that hydrogen gas must be cooled below the temperature at which propane or natural gas liquefies to enter a liquid state. “That is really tough to pull off, creates boiling off issues, and all kinds of challenges,” he said.
More Than a Climate Experiment
Enderle pointed out that estimates place the amount of hydrogen underground at around a trillion tons, much of it renewable, produced when water interacts with certain types of iron-rich rocks. “Only one to two percent of that hydrogen could cover all of the world’s hydrogen needs for hundreds of years,” he said.
“It is a very plentiful, potentially very green resource if you can find, remove, and transport it — much greener than petrochemicals, which have to be refined and can cause significant environmental damage in oceans, overland, and when burned,” he noted.
“As an analyst, I’m extremely optimistic about this topic,” added Vena. “Hydrogen wins when it solves a specific problem, like firm power in constrained grids, industrial heat, or clean backup that beats diesel on both emissions and operations.”
“The industry has spent years arguing about colors of hydrogen, but the next phase is about boring things like uptime, delivered cost, and permitting,” he said. “If geologic hydrogen delivers a steady baseload supply, it could be the rare hydrogen story that feels more like energy infrastructure than a climate experiment.”