A 46 million tonne treasure trove buried in Lorraine! France has just discovered the world’s largest deposit of natural hydrogen, equivalent to half the world’s current production. This discovery could revolutionise clean energy and speed up the energy transition.
The news has been making the headlines for a few weeks, but news of the situation intensified at the beginning of September. In the mining basin around the Folschviller pit in Moselle, scientists from the GeoRessources laboratory at the University of Lorraine and the CNRS recently drilled for a deposit of white hydrogen. After study, it appears that this deposit is the largest in the world for this resource.
A discovery made by chance… or almost by chance
Originally, the scientists were not looking for white hydrogen, but for methane. They finally found something else, at a depth of 1,250 metres. The deposit is estimated to contain up to 46 million tonnes of white hydrogen, or more than half the world’s current annual production of grey hydrogen, i.e. hydrogen produced in plants using natural gas.
“Our data indicates that the subsoil in the Lorraine coalfield is very rich in white hydrogen. If validated, this discovery could make a major contribution to the transition to clean, climate-protecting energy sources”, explained Philippe de Donato, research director at the GeoRessources laboratory in Nancy, last July. The production of grey hydrogen is highly polluting, particularly in view of the huge quantity of CO2 it produces. This greenhouse gas plays a major role in current climate change.
“The oil of the future”
When recently interviewed by BFM Business, Plastic Omnium CEO Laurent Favre agreed with the researchers. “White hydrogen is natural, native hydrogen. Unlike the green or grey hydrogen that we produce and which is the hydrogen used in large quantities today, white hydrogen is somewhere on the planet and there is a lot of it available. It can be used as it is, and could be the oil of the future.
Deposits of white hydrogen have already been identified in Australia, Mali and the United States. But this is a first in France. And it could be vitally important in the years ahead, with the development of clean vehicles that seek to move away from fossil fuels. Hydrogen-powered buses are already a regular sight in towns and cities, and this is clearly just the beginning.
Access to a gigantic deposit of white hydrogen in France could help to speed up this transformation of the transport sector, as well as limiting the polluting production of grey or green hydrogen. But there are still many tests to be carried out to confirm the scale and value of this discovery, which could make a major contribution to reducing the production of greenhouse gases in France for many years to come.
