Technology

White hydrogen is still a non-renewable energy and exploiting it will lead to environmental pollution.

Moreover countries with more hydrogen will gain leverage in the political game just like OPEC has currently, which has only been problems for everyone because of the tensions surrounding oil demand.

Solar and wind on the other hand can be harvested pretty much everywhere, which will give autonomy to most country and thus balance geopolitics.

Tldr: white hydrogen should keep sleeping underground

Pretty hypetrain article without much to back it up. No commercial drilling potential sites found yet. Sounds like someone needs investor money.

Hydrogen is a pretty complicated gas to deal with. The flame is nearly invisible in daylight meaning you could be standing in a Hydrogen fire and only tell because your skin is burning off. The molecule is so small that its hard to contain it because seals leak. Storage of hydrogen is also a problem. The density is also very very low in both gaseous and cryogenic liquid form which means you have to have very large containers compared to most other fuels.

The article proposes to graduate hydrogen to a utility grade fuel, which isn't impossible, its just really really hard, and other alternatives are much easier to accomplish the same goal.

One approach may be to located hydrogen combustion or hydrogen fuel cells very close to the point of extraction turning it into electricity as soon as possible. That would bypass most of the storage challenges at least. However, this idea comes with its own challenges as hydrogen extraction points may not be near utility grade power lines for transport of the electricity produced.

Limitless

Well that was a shit read, asks for a subscription 2.5 sentences in

Hydrogen is going to be abused to white wash fossils, no doubt. It will also keep consumers dependent on gas station distribution. Certain types of companies like both of these things very much.

I don't believe the prices presented in the article. P2X will eventually be able to produce much cheaper green hydrogen than the costs of drilling for white hydrogen. There really isn't a limit to how cheap it can get.

White hydrogen is fine to replace the production of gray hydrogen right now, but I doubt it will continue to be the cheapest method in just a few years.

writes the Telegraph? Next!

See if this works: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2023%2F07%2F13%2Fwhite-hydrogen-disrupt-global-energy-net-zero%2F

Amongst other things it is about this :
46 000 000 000 kg H~2~
...which I posted a few hours ago

Definitely seems like a real thing that could be pretty good for the future, here are some other articles from slightly better places:

https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel

https://www.energy-observer.org/resources/natural-hydrogen