Hydrogen Revisited- Part 1 - The Natural Advantage

Recent developments in the exploration for natural hydrogen may offer Canada an alternative to fossil fuels, a transition that allows the oil and gas industry to thrive in a green future.  Standing in the way.... politics.

Transcript

Hydrogen Revisited-  Part 1 - The Natural Advantage
 

It is June, 2026. I am Patrick Esmonde-White.

Five years ago, I began the Canada Re-imagined podcast out of frustration. My wonderful country was, and is, in peril. Too many problems were just piling up, and too few new ideas were being put forward.  

My hope was that in a small way, I could contribute to a way forward. My utopiab belief is that future generations should inherit a country that enjoys peace, order, good government, and a sustainable environment. That utopia includes less debt, less poverty, good jobs, and social justice. 

A re-occurring theme in earlier podcasts was the need for carbon-free energy. I now return to this theme in a two-part special.  First up: Hydrogen -  Canada's natural advantage. 

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Politicians and pundits tend to think of Canada in terms of the voter-rich south. They debate issues like sovereignty, separatism, housing, inflation, and the like.  Of course, these are all important issues. Daily crises suck the air from the room.  

When politicians speak of resources, they all want to fast-track projects. Mr. Carney's nation-building projects are an example.  In a previous podcast I predicted Mr. Carney would run into roadblocks. Part of the reason was that Canada has too many provincialists, and too few Canadians. Sure enough, Alberta and Ontario demand "shovel in the ground" commitments without concern for the local environment, for climate change, or with authentic respect for the Indigenous on whose land the resources are found. 

I argued that projects can only move ahead quickly if they must start with real consultation with First Nations. As a white, male, urban Canadian, I can't speak for the Indigenous. Still, it seems obvious to me that the First Nations, status or non-status, rural or urban, need hope. They need resources, cultural sovereignty, and basic things like clean water, green energy, and affordable transportation.  Without hope, the treaties, the courts, and the Constitution will be used as roadblocks.

The second essential for rapid development is a commitment to the greenest possible technology.  Of course, fossil fuels must be phased out. It will take time, and the workers in that industry also need hope. 

Deal with these two things, and rapid development may be possible.  

With that in mind, let me examine recent developments that may help Canada achieve these goals. It involves a rapid transition to a hydrogen economy. The concept of a hydrogen economy is not new, but for various reasons, green energy has gone on the proverbial back-burner. President Trump and Premier Smith are winning for the moment 

We know that wind and sun offer clean and affordable energy in Canada's south. They are less useful in remote locations like mines and communities. For a while, micro nuclear reactors seemed to be the most promising northern alternative. I was wrong on this. Those reactors are all way behind schedule, and under the firm control of the American military and high-tech industries. 

Happily, a new green energy option has burst onto the scene, with incredible potential for Canada. 

Let me back up, and tell the story from the start. You may have heard some of it 

In 1987, a crew in the West African country of Mali was drilling for water. The well was dry, but they felt a strange breeze come up from in the well. When someone leaned over the wellhead and lit a cigarette, flames shot into the air. The crew eventually capped the hole and walked away.

Twenty years later, curious scientists returned to the scene. Opening the well, the breeze from underground was still strong. When scientists ran tests, they found the breeze was ninety-eight percent pure hydrogen. That single well now powers a small electric generator, run by a Canadian company, that lights homes in the nearby village.   

This story was a first hint of the potential of natural hydrogen. 

In Canada, the economy has been built around fossil fuels for over a century. First we burned coal, then oil and gas. These industries supported hundreds of thousands of good union jobs, and made up a fifth of Canada's exports. They also destroy the planet.  

That's the dilemma. The planet must end the age of oil, and replace the energy, the good jobs and the revenue loss.  Albertans have their shorts in a twist because they want the jobs and the revenue. 

Elsewhere in Canada, the movement to green energy is happening, but very slowly. Cars are going electric, and industries like steel, cement, and fertilizer are looking for cleaner technology. Wind and solar are now cheaper and cleaner than fossil fuel energy. Batteries are getting better every year. But it is all at a snail's pace.

In theory, hydrogen can be at the heart of a cleaner energy economy. It can power trucks, ships, factories, and aircraft, and can reduce a lot of the pollution from steelmaking, concrete and fertilizer production.  The challenge is to find clean hydrogen. 

Almost all hydrogen today is manufactured from methane, and in the process it releases carbon dioxide. This is called grey hydrogen. It is bad for climate change. 

If the carbon dioxide is instead captured, it is labeled blue hydrogen.  Unfortunately, this capture is mostly bogus, done for show, in what's called-green-washing.  

A third option is to create hydrogen using renewable electricity like wind or solar. It is considered green hydrogen.  Unfortunately,  it is a very inefficient use of electricity.   

That's where the Mali hydrogen well comes into the conversation. It revealed that hydrogen exists, from nature, deep underground. This is called white hydrogen, or gold hydrogen, or natural hydrogen. Experts use all three labels. 

The planet makes this hydrogen in several ways, neither of which I really understand. In one, water deep underground meets iron-rich rocks. The iron sucks the oxygen from the water molecules, creating rust, and hydrogen is released. In the other process, radioactive elements split the water molecules and release hydrogen. Both these processes occur over geological time, all the time, far beneath our feet.  

A great deal of the scientific understanding of how this hydrogen is created came from University of Toronto geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar. She studied water samples from mines deep in the Canadian Shield.  She proved that the rocks of the Shield are not inert as most everybody thought up until then: they are quietly producing hydrogen.   

This was interesting, but mostly academic.  The next big break-through came from French geologists in 2023. They were drilling for natural gas in the Lorraine region of France. Instead of natural gas, they found hydrogen, 90 per cent pure, three kilometres underground. The optimistic estimate was that the reservoir held 46 million tonnes of hydrogen, about half the global production for a full year.  Then, in 2025, another field of similar size was discovered nearby.  Production is expected to start in several years. 

This is a new game, and a really big deal.

So, how does this effect Canada? The Canadian Shield is one of the largest and oldest Precambrian rock formations on Earth. It covers most of central and eastern Canada. Under the surface are the perfect conditions for natural hydrogen: iron-rich rocks, and uranium-rich granites.  Finding hydrogen under the shield in quantity could drive the future Canadian economy. But the exploration has begun.  

The surface of the Canadian Shield makes this exploration very difficult. Much of the north is moose pasture, covered by lakes, peatlands, bogs, and boreal forest.  The tougher the terrain, the higher the cost. Surveys and test wells require winter roads, fly-in operations, or barge access. A drilling program that might cost three million dollars in southern Saskatchewan could cost fifteen million in a remote location.   

With this in mind, Canadian companies have started to explore for hydrogen in locations that are both geologically promising, and within reach. There are other attractive geological locations in the far north, but so far the costs are prohibitive. 

One site being tested is in the Athabasca Basin of northern Saskatchewan. This is one of the richest uranium regions on Earth.   

A second possibility is in the Abitibi greenstone belt, on the Quebec-Ontario border. This is around Timmins, where Sherwood Lollar’s research was done. The early signs are good.   

On the East Coast, the Bay of Islands in Newfoundland is a prime candidate.   

The most actively explored area in Canada is in Southern Quebec, around Thetford Mines. Early tests show hydrogen in the soil there. This project is somewhat different, since the exploration company plans use a chemical reaction to extract hydrogen from the rock, rather than tap a natural hydrogen reservoir.    

Of course, until geologists actually find a flagship discovery, there are no guarantees.  Until the first major field is discovered, advocates will be like the grizzled old prospector shouting that "there's gold in them there hills."  They are crazy until they are proven right.  

The first step in any location is to test the soil for hydrogen that has seeped up from below.  Hydrogen in the soil may indicate a reservoir deep below, under the rock. A test well will then be drilled through the rock, which is expensive and often unsuccessful. If hydrogen is found, more wells will be drilled, the field will be mapped, and the hydrogen can be captured.    

Drilling not new to Canada. I worked on seismic surveys. I helped move oil rigs around Alberta. Canada has spent a century building one of the world’s great drilling industries.  

Albertans should be happy about these developments. The skills and equipment found in the Canadian oil patch transfer almost directly to hydrogen. Geologists, drillers, and pipeline crews would need minimal retraining. The good jobs would continue to exist. 

It will not be straightforward. Oil and gas is usually found in soft sedimentary basins, so drilling is easy. Natural hydrogen will likely be trapped under a very hard rock, which the mining industry is used to, but the drilling is a lot more difficult. A hydrogen well may be a new challenge, but the machinery involved is something Albertans understand. 

A second catch is that hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe. It can leak through seals designed for natural gas, and can make steel brittle. Hydrogen wells would therefore need different seals, pipes and sensors. This said, the aerospace and chemical industries have solved these problems for decades. 

The next problem is moving the hydrogen.  As a light gas with huge volume, it is hard very to transport, to compress, or to liquify. A lot of work is going into finding better technology to capture and compress hydrogen, but there are no breakthroughs yet. 

Pipelines are an existing option. Hydrogen can flow through pipelines that are made of plastic, with a modest amount of pressure. But pipelines such as this cannot move a very large volume of hydrogen a very long distance. If the pipeline was to put the hydrogen under more pressure to move it faster, the pipes would need to be special steel.  

The fertilizer industry has a century-old answer to this challenge: ammonia. Ammonia is made up of three hydrogen atoms and one nitrogen atom. The air we breathe is 78 per cent nitrogen, so it is easy to find. It is not simple, but hydrogen can be separated from other gases that come out of the well, and combined with nitrogen to make ammonia.  

Ammonia by itself is valuable. The world uses about 185 million tonnes of it every year, mostly for fertilizer. It is commonly transported in ships, trucks, railcars, and pipelines.  An ammonia pipeline is a mature technology, used for over fifty years.  

One drawback to pipelines is that there is no revenue from one until the entire thing is completed. Imagine a lengthy pipeline in the Canadian Shield that crosses Indigenous land. The consultations and construction could take years.  

This transportation challenge explains why the locations mentioned above are the first to be explored . They have potentially large amounts of natural hydrogen, and proximity to transportation infrastructure.   

The reward for success could be immense. A hydrogen field similar in size to either of the two in Frence could transform Canada's energy sector. It could smooth the transition away from the fossil fuel industry, and toward a green alternative.   

Realistically, oil and gas will continue to flow for decades. The trick is to transition to less and less fossil fuel, and help nature to get in balance. The Alberta oil wealth will slow to a lower level. It can be replaced by the new industry and the jobs in hydrogen.    

As for developing a single hydrogen field, the capital required, including exploration, drilling, surface facilities, wellhead ammonia production, and transportation, appears to run between six and ten billion dollars. This is based on the cost of similar activity in the Alberta oil fields. Lifetime revenue from a single field like those in France, from sales of ammonia and hydrogen, from could fall between thirty and ninety billion dollars.   

Ammonia, of course, has many industrial uses, especially in  making fertilizer. It can be burned to generate electricity in a specially designed turbine, with no harmful waste. It is possible to re-capture the hydrogen from the ammonia, but with a significant cost.  

Of course, all this is pure speculation until a major Canadian discovery of natural hydrogen is made. Mali and France prove it is possible. The potential in Canada is mind-boggling. 

So far, Canada is tip-toeing into the game. Currently, the total investment for all Canadian exploration for natural hydrogen is a mere fifty million dollars.  This is pocket change to the energy sector.  

This is not to suggest the taxpayer should suddenly invest heavily in this not-yet-proven industry. It simply means that government should play a constructive role. Investors need fair and reasonable laws, clear regulations, predictable taxes and royalties, and assistance on Indigenous consultations and agreements. In Canada, there is no clarity, only confusion.

Australia and France both updated their mining and energy laws specifically for natural hydrogen. They made it clear who owns the resource, and how it gets licensed. That clarity attracted capital to Australia, two or three times the amount invested in Canada.   

The ideal situation would be that all provinces accept a single set of laws and regulations for all Canada, and a single set of royalties. There could be a commitment to cut red tape. Early exploration could be dramatically speeded up if the federal government worked with the oil and gas industry in a collaborative manner. The potential return on investment is phenomenal. 

Dysfunction, however, is built into Canada's Constitution. Natural resources are a provincial responsibility, and provinces are notoriously possessive of their rights. Indigenous politics are also notoriously confusing, and hard to navigate. It is all bogged down in petty politics, provincialism and greed.  Complicating everything is the crazy aunt in the constitutional attic: separatism. 

Quebec is apparently furthest along in an effort to regulate. Quebec would love energy independence. 

Ottawa, and most provincial governments, treat natural hydrogen as an afterthought. They think of energy as primarily oil and gas, with solar, wind and hydro as local options. That is, if they think of hydrogen at all. 

Without a solution to political dysfunction, Canada will lose investors. Fixing this political chaos should be easy. Building a green energy hydrogen industry should be a simple "nation-building" political challenge.  But Canada is Canada.

 Everything is a federal-provincial dispute.

In the ideal accord, the federal government would assume full responsibility for regulation of the natural hydrogen industry. The goal would be to encourage the new industry discover a cash cow, and share the cream with all Canadians. All provinces could benefit from a shared national approach.  In reality, this is unlikely. 

The Indigenous negotiations are a different issue. The First Nations have a moral and legal claim that must be recognized. Nobody can know where a major discovery may take place. To get ahead of the tedious negotiations, a significant portion of the royalties should be committed to a sovereign fund. The fund would be run by and for the First Nations and Metis, whether on reserve or urban.  

An Indigenous sovereign fund would be a big step towards restitution. It's existence could pre-empt project delay, while empowering Indigenous self-government. In hindsight, it should already exist for oil and gas. 

All this is the role of government in encouraging investment. Prospecting is part of Canada's lore. Adventurous prospectors and investors strike gold, or equivalent, and get rich. It is a high "risk and reward" industry.  The search for natural hydrogen fits into this Canadian tradition. 

The good news is that the technology for all this already exists in Canada. The geology for natural hydrogen looks good. The workforce is trained.  The customers, from steel mills to fertilizer plants to the energy industry, already exist.

There seems to be a strong chance that natural hydrogen will be found somewhere in the Canadian shield, in large quantities. If found, it will be an energy revolution. The next generation of engineers, scientists, roughnecks, and tradespeople will foresee a future that is green and well paid. 

The Earth has been making this hydrogen for billions of years, in rocks that Canada is lucky enough to own. Canada must be smart enough, fast enough, and organized enough to grasp the opportunity. That is a tall order.

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I am Patrick Esmonde-White. You have been listening to a two part special on hydrogen for Canada Re-imagined. 

My thanks to artist Tom Evans, and guitar player Tom Plant. Also to Harbinger Media, Canada's premier source of progressive podcasts.  Join me again for part two... The return of the hydrogen airship.