France hits hydrogen jackpot: World's largest reserve valued $92 billion found

[Caribbeans]

France hits hydrogen jackpot: World’s largest reserve valued $92 billion found

This discovery positions France to lead the charge in hydrogen production, boosting local economies.

InterestingEngineering.com | Mar 22, 2025

Scientists in France have made a groundbreaking discovery that could transform clean energy production. Beneath the soil of Folschviller, in the Moselle region, researchers have uncovered an astonishing 46 million tons of natural hydrogen.

This unexpected find has the potential to reshape global energy strategies by providing a new source of carbon-free fuel.

The discovery was made by scientists from the GeoRessources laboratory and the CNRS while they were searching for methane. Instead, at a depth of 4,101 feet (1,250 meters), they found an enormous deposit of white hydrogen.

This form of hydrogen is naturally occurring and does not require industrial production, unlike green hydrogen, which is made using renewable energy, or gray hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuels.

To put this discovery into perspective, the newly found deposit represents more than half of the world’s annual gray hydrogen production—but without the environmental costs. If extracted efficiently, this resource could provide a clean, low-cost energy solution that eliminates CO₂ emissions entirely. Media reports estimate the discovery’s value to be approximately $92 billion...more
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/france-worlds-largest-hydrogen-deposit

[Big Blue Marble]

1. When will Trump declare

he is annexing France🇫🇷

[riversedge]

2. 3-2-...... yet, I think Trump is a bit scared of Macron.

[NNadir]

3. Um, um, um, the United States alone consumes around 20 million barrels of oil a day, roughly 3 million tons. I...

...fully understand that all of the hydrogen bullshit that flies around here is motivated to greenwashing fossil fuels, specifically drill, baby, drill mentality.

I can see it now.

"I'm drilling for hydrogen, but whoops, I ran into gas; I guess I'll have to burn it."

There's no way that it would be economically viable, even if it were real and recoverable, to drill for 46 million tons of hydrogen for a few days of fuel.

One of the things about airheads pushing this tiresome shit, including the outright lie that hydrogen is "green," and produced by so called "renewable energy" is that like most cheap marketeers they assume that the general public is stupid enough to lack a sense of scale.

Now I realize that the people here working to market fossil fuels as "hydrogen" don't give a shit about the extreme global heating with which we now live, but even if there were as much geological hydrogen as there is natural gas, producing water in a time of rising seas would be irresponsible.

It's bullshit, as usual.

France by the way, doesn't actually need to drill for anything. They have the cleanest primary energy supply in the world. They're powered by nuclear energy.

[Think. Again.]

5. Wouldn't it be great if nuclear was the only energy source we needed?

Oh well, back to reality.

[NNadir]

8. Wouldn't it be great if there weren't uneducated people incapable of understanding that nuclear energy IS the only...

...energy source we will ever need.

Unfortunately, understanding as much would require a background is something called "science," in particular the science known as "thermodynamics." High temperatures, generally only accessible from nuclear fuels are the key to eliminating fossil fuels.

I've never met a hydrogen pushing airhead, however, who understands the laws of thermodynamics. If one understands thermodynamics, it follows that one recognizes what horrible bullshit tiresome hydrogen hype actually is. If one doesn't understand the laws of thermodynamics, one can believe that hydrogen is "green," which clearly it isn't.

[Think. Again.]

11. Ha! Those are gonna be some fuuuuunnnnny looking cars!

[NNadir]

12. One of the more stupid things bourgeois fools focus on is their fucking cars. The car CULTure is not sustainable...

...in any form, and in fact, there are billions of people who live on this planet who have never been in one. Unfortunately, the bourgeois types that populate this space couldn't care less about human poverty, anymore than they care about the destruction of the planetary atmosphere and they always want to talk about fucking cars.

The worship of the car CULTure accounts for vast destruction, and, notably, the rise of fascism via the mechanism of Eloon Musk, who at one time here at DU, ten or so years ago, was worshipped because of the stupid idea that electric cars are "green," only slightly less stupid than the idea that hydrogen is "green."

Cars are not "green," in any form. We need to find ways to minimize their use.

This said, it may be useful in a sustainable future - one increasingly unlikely but still barely feasible - there would be some use for self propelled vehicles, such as ambulances, fire trucks, farm tractors, and certain kinds of trucks. In this case, using technology known as thermochemical hydrogen cycles to produce captive hydrogen, one would close the carbon cycle by hydrogenating carbon dioxide to produce the wonder fuel DME, about which I have written here many times. Note that the critical temperature of DME is 401 Kelvin meaning that it can be liquified at temperatures higher than the boiling point of water (373 K). It can displace all fossil fuels, LPG, diesel fuel, dangerous natural gas, etc. There are many thousands of papers in the primary scientific literature on the subject, which is not to say that they have led to industrialization of DME beyond the limited uses it now enjoys, for instance as a propellant in hair spray cans, having displaced chlorofluorocarbons. The reason this has not happened is attributable to human stupidity. DME is, among other things, an excellent refrigerant, and in theory could replace all hydrofluorocarbons, albeit with the elevated risk connected with its flammability.

The critical temperature of hydrogen is 33 Kelvin, just 33 degrees above absolute zero. It can't be liquified at the temperature of dry ice. It's exceedingly stupid, almost criminally stupid, to hype hydrogen as a consumer product but there's no suppressing this moronic hype, which has popped up like an ugly hydra, every decade or so for half a century, with much public idiocy attached to it.

Hydrogen is, however an important captive intermediate, which is why it is synthesized industrially using dangerous fossil fuels with exergy destruction. The world food supply is dependent on hydrogen manufacture to make ammonia, which is the most important industrial use of this otherwise dangerous industrial product.

The great late Nobel Laureate George Olah, one of the Martians wrote a paper on this subject, closed carbon cycles, involving methanol and/or DME, in 2011. DME is superior since it is fairly chemically inert and non-toxic.

Olah's paper is here:

Anthropogenic Chemical Carbon Cycle for a Sustainable Future George A. Olah, G. K. Surya Prakash, and Alain Goeppert Journal of the American Chemical Society 2011 133 (33), 12881-12898.

I have in my personal library many hundreds of scientific papers on this topic, only a small subset of which were written by Olah.

Doing this would not be easy, since it require a scientifically literate public, something we clearly don't have.

I'd suggest reading Olah's paper (or any of his other papers on the subject), but I'm not sure that hydrogen hype types can read all that well, unless it involves reading the checks provided by fossil fuel companies paying people to greenwash fossil fuels as "hydrogen" using slick marketing videos of the type we see here frequently. The practical literacy of non-professional fossil fuel marketing hydrogen people is extremely low, which is why they're so full of shit.

[SnoopDog]

7. 'They have the cleanest primary energy supply in the world'

Had to laugh... Nuclear energy the cleanest energy source? You do understand it takes a phenomenal amount of coal/oil/gas to build a nuke plant?

And what about all the waste? Let's put it in your back yard!

Ever hear about solar energy? Wind Energy?

I believe you are a nuke scientist so I understand your position.

[NNadir]

9. Whenever I hear someone whining about so called "nuclear waste," I am inspired to ask them to show, using...

...reputable scientific references that the storage of valuable used nuclear fuel over the 70 year history of commercial nuclear energy has killed as many people as fossil fuel waste, aka air pollution will kill in the next twelve hours.

The selective attention to so called "nuclear waste" - a bit of propaganda as stupid as claiming the orange mold in the White House will make American great again - as opposed to the very real issue of fossil fuel waste is not merely ignorant, it is morally repugnant, since it is ignorance that kills people

The number of people killed each day from fossil fuel waste - and note that I'm not even referring to the extreme global heating that dangerous fossil fuel waste is clearly causing can be found in a highly cited paper in the primary scientific literature showing the risk associated with all forms of risk, including energy risk. I cite it often:

It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

At roughly 7 million deaths per year from air pollution, this works out to around 19,000 people per day.

Whenever I ask a tiresome fool whining about so called "nuclear waste" to show, again, that the 70 year history of containing used nuclear fuels has resulted in 19,000 deaths, they change the subject, mumble or change the subject, because the storage of valuable used nuclear fuels is extremely safe. In a world where people appreciated science rather than the bullshit out of weak minded journalists - I often joke that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better - this would not be an issue.

I am, I claim, an expert on the chemistry and value of used nuclear fuels. I built this expertise in the primary scientific literature, not the lazy sloganeering of barely literate antinukes. I don't believe in the concept of "waste," but rather enjoy the privilege of understanding use, which is analogous to unperturbed biological systems, where all components of the system represent a closed cycle.

Have a nice day. I hope you're not killed by a scary errant beta particle from a tritium atom Fukushima that all of the antinuclear airheads like to whine about while they ignore the consequences of fossil fuels, about which they couldn't care less.

[SnoopDog]

10. Dude, like I said I know you are a Nuke scientist...

It really doesn't matter to me about all your justifications and data. And I do have degree in computer scientist so I am not a dumb fuck.

I am very glad however that we don't have nuke plants all over the place. They are too dangerous.

[NNadir]

13. Dude, I know that data doesn't matter to you. I have never met an antinuke who understands data.

Zero from zeros.

Nuclear energy doesn't have to be risk free to be superior to everything else, including living in a fucking cave. It only needs to be superior to everything else, which it is.

Nuclear energy saves lives:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

It follows that antinuke ignorance kills people.

I note it has also left the planet in flames.

I'm usually aware that I am dealing with a fool, when, on this anonymous they have to tell me they have a degree in something or another. Having a degree does not excuse one from being ignorant. I often interact with holders of Ph.D degrees who are entirely ignorant on most things, even subjects for which they hold their degree. Sometimes, when someone needs to tell me about their "degree" I shake my head thinking how narrow education has become.

Ok, dude?

[SnoopDog]

14. When you attack the person...

When you call a person a 'fool', you lost all credibility.

Data and manipulation of data is what my profession is all about. Would writing a post with a bunch of computer sciency stuff make you feel better?

When an energy solution has the potential to kill the Earth, it is not desirable. It takes a huge amounts of fossil fuels and years to build a nuke plant. It is not the 'cleanest' energy source. Nuclear energy has never been the solution.

Imagine every roof structure having solar cells! Wind farms. These kind of energy sources are extremely clean after installation. This is how we power our selves if we want to live.

And yes the planet is on fire because of fossil fuels - that is a political and bribery issue. That is the reason we are killing ourselves.

Want proof it is political and bribery? Just look at the Republican Party. They are destroyers of humanity. Get off fossil fuels and our planet heals.

I'm guessing the only thing you know about is nuke science. Maybe you should expand your perceived smarts in other energy sources.

[Think. Again.]

4. Wow. I was hoping the possibility of large reserves of Natural Hydrogen...

...would play out, and this confirms it!

I wonder where they'll find more?

This IS a big deal!

[Think. Again.]

6. For some reason, the InterestingEngineering.com link in the OP....

...keeps redirecting in my browser.

So here's an archived version link in case anyone else is having the same problem....

https://archive.is/TAaNq

[NickB79]

15. According to Google, 1 ton of H2 is equivalent to 7.3 barrels of oil

That would be 6.3 million barrels of oil.

North Dakota alone produces 8-9 million barrels per WEEK.

Globally we consume 100 million barrels per day.

This is 1.5 HOURS of global oil demand equivalent.

Yikes.

[progree]

16. I get 46 million tons of H2 is equivalent in energy content to 1686 million barrels of oil

Last edited Thu Mar 27, 2025, 08:06 PM - Edit history (1)

or about 17 days of global oil consumption. So yes, we need lots and lots of these discoveries to move the needle.

1 ton of H2 = 5 tons of oil
1 ton of oil = 7.33 barrels

According to the OP, they found a reservoir of 46 million tons of H2

46 million tons of H2 * (5 tons oil/ton H2) = 230 million tons of oil

230 million tons oil * 7.33 barrels/ton = 1686 million barrels

World oil consumption = 100 million barrels a day

==========================================

All of this assumes the entire 46 million tons of H2 is recoverable.

If North Dakota produces 8.5 million barrels of oil per week

1686/8.5 = 198 weeks or 3.8 years.