If you’re tired of being told that your future depends on a patchy solar panel, a humming windmill, or an electric car with a battery made from half the periodic table, this article is for you. Scientists have found something that could change the game: natural hydrogen, a clean energy source quietly bubbling away beneath our feet that could, in theory, power the planet for more than 170,000 years.

Yes, you read that right. One hundred and seventy thousand. That’s enough to outlive solar panels, political cycles, and probably even TikTok trends.

What is this stuff—and where has it been hiding?

Natural hydrogen (also called white or gold hydrogen) isn’t the same as the industrial hydrogen we currently make by burning natural gas –which ironically creates carbon emissions. This version forms naturally deep in the Earth’s crust through processes with names that sound like they belong in a sci-fi script:

• Serpentinization, which happens when water reacts with iron-rich rocks;
• radiolysis, where natural radioactive decay splits water molecules; and
• weathering, which slowly releases hydrogen as rocks break down.

Instead of being cooked up in a man-made factory, this hydrogen is created by geology itself, and we’re just now realizing how much of it there might be.

According to a 2025 study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, scientists from Oxford, Durham, and the University of Toronto estimate that Earth’s crust has already produced billions of tons of hydrogen, and it’s still being generated. If we tapped into even a fraction of that, it could meet humanity’s current energy demands for over 170,000 years.

Deposits have already been found bubbling up in places like:

• Bourakébougou, Mali, where locals have been using it to power their village for over a decade;
• Albania, in ancient geological zones called ophiolites;
• France, where a newly discovered reserve sits 3,000 feet underground; and
• The U.S., where up to 30 states —especially places like Kansas— could hold rich deposits.

And unlike oil or gas, hydrogen doesn’t take millions of years to form. It’s renewable in real time, continually produced by Earth’s natural processes.

There sure is a catch, isn’t it?

Well, for once, the catch isn’t how it’s made —it’s how to find it. Detecting and safely extracting hydrogen gas from beneath the Earth’s surface requires precision and investment. Until recently, we didn’t even have a proper “recipe” for where to look. But that same study has now outlined key geological markers—kind of like a treasure map, but with science instead of pirates.

The extraction tech is being developed as we speak. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t require blowing up mountains or draining entire lakes either, so that’s already an improvement.

However, a lot of what gets sold as “green” these days is really just less dirty than the alternative:

• Solar panels are wonderful… until they wear out in 20 years and end up as toxic e-waste that no one knows how to recycle.
• Wind turbines don’t pollute the air, but try finding a landfill that takes a 300-foot fiberglass blade. And let’s not mention the massacre a wind turbine field means for migratory birds.
• Electric cars might save on gas, but those batteries? They need lithium, cobalt, and nickel—minerals often mined in environmentally damaging, exploitative conditions.

Even the so-called green hydrogen that’s made with electrolysis requires enormous amounts of electricity—most of which, surprise, still comes from fossil fuels, ironically enough.

So no, natural hydrogen isn’t perfect. But it’s geology doing its job, without needing rare earth metals, massive solar farms, or child labor in cobalt mines.

Hydrogen, a potentially green solution

Hydrogen is a clean fuel. When you burn it, it releases nothing but water vapor. No CO₂, no soot, no weird side effects that show up in documentaries five years later. And if we can harvest it from natural underground sources, we might have a truly scalable, low-impact alternative to fossil fuels.

Natural hydrogen could back up the grid when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. It could feed fuel cells, power data centers, or replace the coal that’s still propping up too many energy systems worldwide. And the best part? Unlike the solar panel on your roof, natural hydrogen doesn’t care if it’s cloudy outside.