Dr Ruth Freeman

And what they've done here is they've gone to a mine in Ontario and they've come up with a new way of measuring this hydrogen reserve.

So they did a number of boreholes around the mine and took a lot of measurements and they were able to estimate the flow of hydrogen coming out

And it's about eight kilograms of hydrogen annually per borehole.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but they did about 15,000 boreholes.

So when you add all of that together, they estimate there could be over 140 tons of hydrogen produced each year.

And that is enough to generate nearly five kilowatts of energy, which would be enough to power about 400 homes.

or indeed to power the mine, which is very, very close to where they've done this exploration.

So this is very interesting because the way that they've actually identified how much hydrogen is there and how they could potentially extract it does open up opportunities in other areas where we think there is probably hydrogen and that it could be extracted.

And, you know, there is a lot of hydrogen under the earth.

So the U.S.

Geological Survey estimates there could be more than $5 trillion

metric tons of this kind of hydrogen around the world.

And obviously only a tiny amount of that could be recoverable.

I mean, it is a finite resource still.

This is built up over billions of years, just like fossil fuels.

But I guess if you think about the situation that we're in where we need time, even if we could only get one or two percent of this hydrogen out from under the earth and use it, that would be all our power needs for the next 200 years, even if you projected the increase in demand for electricity.

Right.

You know, there may be certain areas, there's certain geological formations where there might be hydrogen that could be tapped into.

And I mean, the market would suggest people think it's viable because the number of companies trying to find it has gone up quite significantly.

So a moa is a bird that has gone extinct.