Table of Contents
- France Discovers 46 Million Tons of White Hydrogen Underground in Fauchevillere
- A Groundbreaking Discovery in the Future of Energy
- The Origin of the Hydrogen Discoveries
- Historical Context: Global Hydrogen Findings
- The Massive Potential of Subsurface Hydrogen
- Understanding Natural Hydrogen Formation
- Hydrogen as a Game-Changing Fuel Source
- The Hydrogen Car Comparison
- Could Hydrogen Finally Live Up to the Hype?
- The Future of Hydrogen: Combustion vs. Fuel Cells
- Hydrogen’s Global Potential and Economic Impact
France Discovers 46 Million Tons of White Hydrogen Underground in Fauchevillere
A Groundbreaking Discovery in the Future of Energy
France just discovered 46 million tons of white hydrogen underground in Fauchevillere, the second such discovery in as many years. While hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it’s so small and light that it’s always proven tricky to find in any abundance here on Earth.
And while grey hydrogen produced from steam reforming natural gas is dirty and polluting, and green hydrogen is produced by splitting hydrogen atoms from water using renewable energy sources and is expensive, this pure hydrogen is just sitting there, waiting to be extracted and used, much like oil and gas.
This sounds like it could be an absolute game-changer in the future of energy, so is it? Might there be more such deposits around the world? And could this finally be the break hydrogen needs to live up to the hype as the fuel of the future?
Let’s figure this out together. I’m Ricky and this is 2BitDaVinci.
The Origin of the Hydrogen Discoveries
Both hydrogen discoveries occurred in France’s northern Lorraine region, within the Moselle area. Lorraine is known for its iron-rich soils and a subsequent discovery of mining.
In 2023, researchers stumbled upon the first hydrogen deposit while checking for safety risks associated with an abandoned mine.
This new discovery in 2025 emerged from a geological assessment aimed at mapping future potential energy deposits. These two discoveries in the same region so close together might suggest that this is just the beginning, and that France is sitting on even greater hydrogen reserves.
This latest discovery is projected to be around 46 million tons. That’s $92 billion dollars in just one deposit.
Historical Context: Global Hydrogen Findings
France is not the only place researchers have found hydrogen. In the 1930s, in Adelaide, Australia, oil well drillers reported finding vast amounts of high-purity hydrogen. But at the time, it was considered a useless byproduct with no commercial value.
In 1987, in the village of Mali, Africa, a worker attempted to light a cigarette next to a certain water well, and that well unexpectedly caught fire due to natural hydrogen seeping out from the well. A local petroleum company was soon hired to harvest and sell the hydrogen.
As of 2023, this Mali hydrogen well remains as the world’s first and only economically successful hydrogen well.
The Massive Potential of Subsurface Hydrogen
According to a study in Physics Today from February 2025, trillions of tons of hydrogen gas are likely trapped in the Earth’s subsurface, potentially more than enough to meet the projected hydrogen needed to achieve a net zero carbon emission future for about 200 years.
So this might just be the beginning of a new golden age of hydrogen.
Understanding Natural Hydrogen Formation
Now you’re probably wondering how this hydrogen was created, and if natural processes made it, could it be a renewing source of continued hydrogen supply?
Well, the main sources of natural hydrogen come from the following:
- Degassing of deep hydrogen from Earth’s crust and mantle
- Reaction of water with ultra basic rock in a process called serpentinization
- Water in contact with reducing agents in Earth’s mantle
- Weathering where water is in contact with freshly exposed surface rock
- Decomposition of hydroxyl ions in the structure of minerals
- Natural water radiolysis
- Decomposition of organic matter and biological activity
It turns out though, about 80% of the world’s hydrogen is thought to come from serpentinization.
Why France Is a Hotspot
Serpentinization is a hydration and metamorphic transformation of ferromagnetic materials. This explains why the iron-rich regions in France would have such large amounts of hydrogen.
There are numerous reactions that occur in crustal rock, but this reaction in particular is of interest. Phthalate, an iron-rich crystalline formation, and water react to produce magnetite, silicon dioxide, and pure hydrogen.
Now I couldn’t find exact data on the rate of these reactions, and how quickly hydrogen is produced, and if it would replenish itself fast enough to maintain the need and the demand that we would have on it. But understanding the underlying chemical processes and geology could greatly help with identifying where other hydrogen deposits might be hiding.
Hydrogen as a Game-Changing Fuel Source
To fully understand how impactful this discovery can be, we must first understand the incredible potential of hydrogen as a fuel source.
Hydrogen’s Energy Density
Here’s a table of the energy density, both by weight and volume, for hydrogen.
As you can see, hydrogen has more energy per kilogram than any fuel other than nuclear and is over three times higher than gasoline. This means if a Boeing 787 with 127,000 liters of fuel capacity used hydrogen instead, it would save 67,400 kilograms or about 148,000 pounds in fuel, one-third of its full takeoff weight, which is amazing.
Now what’s less amazing is hydrogen’s volumetric energy density.
In liquid form, it tops out at about 2.8 kilowatt hours per liter, like the liquid hydrogen used in the space shuttle, and compressed to 700 bars, but still in gaseous form, it’s only 1.55 kilowatt hours per liter.
This pales in comparison to gasoline’s 9.5, meaning that that same Boeing 787 would go from 127,000 liters of jet A fuel to 432,000 liters for hydrogen.
The Hydrogen Car Comparison
Let’s look at the Toyota Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell EV. The second generation Mirai holds 5.65 kilograms of hydrogen, good for 400 miles of range.
To achieve a similar range with a battery EV, you’d need 540 kilograms of a Tesla Model S battery pack.
Today, over 95% of the hydrogen produced worldwide comes from gray hydrogen, which is a dirty carbon intensive process from natural gas. And if used in that way, it would be better to just use the natural gas directly than to produce hydrogen from it.
So gray hydrogen isn’t going to work in the future.
Clean green hydrogen is energy intensive and not produced currently in any meaningful volume. This is why here in California, hydrogen costs about $35 per kilogram. So 5.65 kilograms would cost $198 to fill up and cost about 50 cents per mile.
Compare that to the Tesla that only costs 10 cents per mile in equivalent electricity at 40 cents per kilowatt hour.
And this price problem is what a naturally occurring deposit of hydrogen could potentially disrupt.
Could Hydrogen Finally Live Up to the Hype?
Imagine if we only had a blueprint for how to make oil and gas. And instead of just finding it naturally in wells underground, we had to actually produce it. It would have never taken off the way it did.
And this has been the reality for hydrogen. Rather than a source of fuel to extract, it was a concept and recipe that needed to be created and quite expensively.
Did you know that in 1806, Francois Isaac de Riva designed the first internal combustion engine which ran on hydrogen and oxygen as a mixture, not gasoline?
But because of availability of crude oil and scale of oil refinement, it would go on to become the fuel the world over.
The Future of Hydrogen: Combustion vs. Fuel Cells
If large deposits of hydrogen start popping up and investment in a worldwide hydrogen economy took hold, what would that look like?
Hydrogen Combustion
Hydrogen has two proven ways to provide useful energy. The first is hydrogen combustion. Much like an internal combustion piston engine or jet engine, hydrogen and oxygen can be mixed, compressed, and ignited via a spark.
In this way, hydrogen could prove to be a very clean transition for companies producing internal combustion engines today.
Hydrogen has two things going for it:
- It has a wide flammability range, meaning it can be mixed with air in a wide range of fuel to air ratios.
- It has high auto-ignition temperatures, meaning the fuel-air mixture can be compressed to higher levels without self-ignition.
These properties make hydrogen combustion a great option for aviation, for example.
Combustion Emissions Caveat
But surprisingly, there are still emissions. You’ve probably heard that the only waste product of hydrogen is pure, clean water, which is partially true, but not in the case of combustion.
In the case of gasoline, which is a hydrocarbon, made up of long chains of hydrogen and carbon, when combusted, waste byproducts are produced like carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide because of the carbon present.
But with hydrogen, there is no carbon, and therefore there is no carbon dioxide, which is good. But the hydrogen-oxygen reaction combined with nitrogen, which is about 80% of our air, produces nitrogen oxides. This is harmful and causes acid rain and other health issues.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells
The second way to produce energy from hydrogen is via a fuel cell, a chemical reaction that reformulates hydrogen and oxygen in air into pure water, and produces electricity.
Fuel cells have efficiencies around 60%, double the 30% or so for hydrogen combustion.
So between these two approaches, we could produce energy for the grid, for planes, trains, and large shipping, all from hydrogen.
Hydrogen’s Global Potential and Economic Impact
These discoveries in France aren’t the only ones. Mali is currently pumping 5 tons a year from a small well, and there’s clues popping up that there might be reserves in Australia, US, and Iceland.
And the researchers from France say that hydrogen is likely being produced geologically worldwide. If just 1% of these deposits were tappable, that’s 500 million tons over centuries. Not a niche fuel, but a fossil fuel contender.
These discoveries in France could spark thousands of new jobs, revive Lorraine, and even cut Europe’s reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Now we will likely still need to produce clean green hydrogen to supplement deposits, especially if hydrogen is going to replace oil and natural gas worldwide. But initial deposits, just like we had for oil and gas, could be the boost in the helping hand hydrogen really needs to take off.
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