Natural hydrogen: European interest heats up, France leading the way

Potentially massive quantities of naturally produced hydrogen were discovered in France last year. Since then, prospectors across Europe have been on the lookout for more deposits and are calling for greater public support for their efforts.

Earlier this month, the European Court of Auditors heavily criticised the EU’s “unrealistic” targets for low-carbon hydrogen, which the Court considers to be “driven by political will”.

Irrespective of whether the targets were appropriate or not, the continent remains well short of hydrogen supplies which are supposed to store energy, produce alternative fuels or replace gas in industrial applications, as part of the EU’s journey to carbon neutrality.

In this context, there is growing interest in natural hydrogen, produced by underground chemical reactions. According to the latest studies, it is cheaper, less carbon-intensive than hydrogen produced from renewables or nuclear power, and potentially abundant.

For all these reasons, the so-called ‘natural’, ‘geological’, ‘native’ or ‘white’ hydrogen was the subject of a media boom in June 2023 when an estimated deposit of 45 million tonnes of hydrogen – more than twice the amount expected to be consumed annually in the EU by 2030 – was discovered in the north-east of France.

Since then, research and exploration permits have multiplied across Europe. In France, President Emmanuel Macron announced “massive investments” to explore the potential of this energy source.

A year of progress in France

The signs are promising. Five months after the discovery in the French northeast, the first exploration license was issued in November for a site in the south-west of the country, with drilling foreseen within two years.

Five other permits are currently being processed for sites across France. However, other projects are shielded by industrial confidentiality, Christophe Rigollet, a geologist at the CVA group consulting company, which is involved in several of these projects, told Euractiv.

He said the European authorities should ask oil and gas companies to make available their data on the state of the continent’s subsoil.

After the Nouvelle-Aquitaine (south-west) and Brittany (north-west), Bourgogne Franche-Comté (center-east) should soon be launching a review of its subsoil, Rigollet said.

The regional interest is spurring on national interest, as evidenced by Macron’s direct involvement and the funding in early July of a national project to improve methods of identifying the resource.

More broadly, the government launched a study last April to identify high-potential areas. The first results are expected in late 2024 – early 2025, according to Nicolas Gonthier, head of earth2, a cluster of European organisations focused on natural hydrogen.

European level

While France is the driving force, the rest of Europe is not far behind, with more than a dozen projects scattered across the continent.

In the east of Germany, a project is currently under appraisal by French company 45-8 Energy. In the north-east of Spain, drilling on the first site in the country to receive a permit should begin before the end of the year.

Last November, a British mining company announced an exploration contract in Eastern Europe without specifying the location. In Albania, French researchers discovered a potentially large deposit in February, while Finland’s authorities have published a map showing the concentrations of natural hydrogen in several gas wells.

In Poland, the authorities put in place the legal framework for natural hydrogen exploration last September, although no projects have yet been identified.

Other projects are also under development in Iceland, Serbia, Sweden, Norway, Ukraine, and Kosovo.

Mapping and support 

In its working programme for 2024, Clean Hydrogen, an EU-led public-private partnership supporting hydrogen activities, plans to fund a mapping study on the potential of natural hydrogen at the European level. Earth2’s Nicolas Gonthier, like other stakeholders, would like the project to be launched before the end of 2024.

Today, the scientific community does not yet have the fully appropriate methodology for assessing Europe’s hydrogen potential, acknowledges CVA’s Rigollet.

Moreover, this is a preliminary step before a ‘label’ for natural hydrogen in the EU’s green taxonomy rules, which determines which investments can be considered as ‘sustainable’ – something stakeholders are calling for and the Commission has hinted at.

“There is no credible data yet”, a European Commission representative said in response to a Euractiv request for comment.

However, in February, EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson acknowledged the possibility that the EU’s taxonomy definition of low-carbon hydrogen – less than 3.38 kilos of CO2-equivalent per kilo of hydrogen – “could include natural hydrogen”.

Streamlining administrative processes, such as permit issuing, and increasing public subsidies, could also contribute to the sector’s momentum, according to researchers and sectoral players.

While some policy measures can be taken now, it will be some time before natural hydrogen’s full potential is known. First European drillings, in France, are not expected before the end of 2028 at the earliest.

[Edited by Donagh Cagney/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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