By Stephen Smoot
West Virginia serves as one of the leading producers of energy in the United States, ranking fifth among all states in that category. Most associate West Virginia with coal and natural gas, but the state also has reserves of oil. Developments in different parts of the state also harness wind and solar energy.
A new map released by the United States Geological Survey indicates that the state may have yet another prime source of energy lurking beneath the surface. The USGS released a map that shows the prospectivity of hydrogen across the United States not counting Alaska, Hawaii, or other territories.
“Geologic, or naturally occurring, hydrogen,” shared the USGS website page on the new map, “has the potential to become a new, low-carbon, primary energy resource. Often referred to as ‘white’ or ‘gold’ hydrogen, this gas occurs naturally in the Earth’s subsurface, similar to petroleum resources.”
The word prospectivity in mineral or other extractive fields refers to two aspects, first, the likelihood that a substance may be found and second, its ease of recovery. In this case, the map indicates the most likely areas in the United States to extract hydrogen from the ground.
As the USGS stated, “prospective regions are those regions in which all major components necessary for a hydrogen accumulation likely are present—a source of sufficient hydrogen generation, porous reservoirs for storage, and seals to prevent leakage.”
The USGS map indicated that, potentially, the best chances for a major field of production lay in Michigan’s lower peninsula. The northwest corner of that region holds perhaps the best chance to recover significant amounts of usable hydrogen for fuel or other purposes.
Three other regions also stand out. One lies along the border of Montana and North Dakota, a second lies beneath and around the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, while the third covers some of the most economically challenged counties of eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia on either side of the Tug and Big Sandy Rivers and extending south to the Cumberland Gap.
Those represent the most likely areas, but most of the United States, according to the map, has a better than average chance of sitting on top of ground reserves of hydrogen.
Much of the midsection of the country from the Shenandoah Valley in the east to the eastern area of the Rocky Mountains shows a better than average chance of having ground hydrogen beneath it. Southeastern and northwestern states, as well as the southern three-fourths of Texas present the lowest chance of hydrogen recovery.
The map uses a scale of prospectivity that ranges from zero to one. The closer one gets to one, the more likely the chance that the area has ground hydrogen. In North central West Virginia, for example, the prospectivity appears to be around .07 while the Tug and Big Sandy Valley region shows a prospectivity of 0.9.
This does not mean that anyone should start applying for well permits just yet, however.
The map only indicates the potential for sub surface hydrogen and prospects of recovery. It does not offer information on the depth of the pockets or whether they are large enough to make recovery profitable. “Most of this hydrogen is likely to be in accumulations that are too deep, too far offshore, or too small to ever be economically recovered,” the USGS site stated, but then added “that said, even a small fraction of the estimated amount of subsurface hydrogen could potentially meet all global projected demand for hundreds of years.”
The USGS also shared that “it is currently not possible to quantitatively assess the resource potential” of hydrogen deposits.
Also the science of ground reserves of hydrogen is still new. Just five years ago, an article in Earth-Science Reviews stated that “hydrogen has primarily been studied as an atmospheric gas, but geologic hydrogen is so poorly understood, that none of the articles on hydrogen budget accounted for geologically generated hydrogen.”
“Using a conservative range of input values, the model predicts a mean volume of hydrogen that could supply the projected global hydrogen demand for thousands of years,” said Geoffrey Ellis, a USGS geologist.
Ellis added that, “We have to be very careful in interpreting this number, though. Based on what we know about the distribution of petroleum and other gases in the subsurface, most of this hydrogen is probably inaccessible.”
Scientists know at least some of the geological processes under the Earth’s surface that create hydrogen, but not which ones indicate pockets with enough hydrogen to make recovery worthwhile.
Each known process for natural ground hydrogen production, according to Science magazine, involves the splitting of water molecules into the constituent elements of hydrogen and oxygen. The first process, radiolysis, sees trace radioactive elements in rocks emitting radiation that gradually creates hydrogen from exposed groundwater.
A process called serpentinization creates hydrogen when water at high temperatures reacts with iron-rich rocks and splits the molecules.
Another source could be streams that rise from the mantle or core of the Earth, but this remains theoretical.
West Virginia has a number of hydrogen projects actively underway. This includes a “green” hydrogen hub planned for Petersburg and other projects, part of the Appalachian Regional Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2), developing “blue” hydrogen using natural gas as the fuel needed to run the process in other areas of the state.
Hydrogen fuel is seen by many experts as the most efficient and effective alternative fuel for powering motor vehicles. Unlike electric vehicles, hydrogen powered engines can run effectively in the same topography and environments as gasoline powered vehicles.
