Vema predicts cheap hydrogen could change where data centers are built

The automotive manufacture has struggled to follow hydrogen astatine scale, but concern users and information centers mightiness person amended luck.

Vema Hydrogen inked a woody successful December to proviso California information centers, and present it has completed a aviator task successful Quebec to powerfulness manufacture with hydrogen that it produces heavy underground.

The startup drills wells successful regions with circumstantial types of iron-rich stone that merchandise hydrogen state erstwhile treated with water, heat, pressure, and immoderate catalysts. Vema past draws the hydrogen to the aboveground and sells it to concern users.

“To proviso the Quebec section market, which is astir 100,000 tons per year, you would request 3 quadrate kilometers, which is nothing,” Pierre Levin, CEO of Vema, told TechCrunch.

Vema’s archetypal aviator good volition nutrient respective tons of hydrogen per day, and adjacent year, it plans to drill its archetypal commercialized well, which volition scope 800 meters into the Earth. Vema expects to nutrient hydrogen from the archetypal wells for little than $1 per kilogram, a wide utilized benchmark for cleanable hydrogen. 

Most hydrogen contiguous is made by a process known arsenic steam reformation of methane (SMR), successful which steam is utilized to interruption hydrogen molecules disconnected methane from earthy gas. It’s vigor intensive, and some the process to marque steam and the chemic absorption itself merchandise c dioxide.

Less polluting sources of hydrogen exist, but they thin to outgo more. Hydrogen from SMR costs betwixt 70 cents and $1.60 per kilogram, according to the IEA. Capturing c from SMR tin adhd astir 50% to those prices, portion the cleanest process, which uses zero c energy to powerfulness an electrolyzer, drives costs up respective fold.

Stimulated geologic hydrogen, oregon “engineered mineral hydrogen,” arsenic Vema calls it, promises to beryllium 1 of the cleanest sources of hydrogen, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. 

Once Vema has refined its techniques, Levin expects it to nutrient hydrogen for little than 50 cents per kilogram. At that price, Vema’s hydrogen would beryllium cheaper than immoderate different root connected the market.

Because the rocks that Vema is targeting are wide distributed, Levin said the institution volition drill wells adjacent to companies that request power, including information centers. California, for example, has immoderate of the largest formations of ophiolite, an iron-rich benignant of stone that was pushed up from the water bottommost by sheet tectonics. 

If Vema tin present hydrogen astatine the terms it’s forecasting, past a quirk of geology could crook California into a mecca for information centers. “You person a ton of information centers who are trying to get immoderate baseline, decarbonized electricity,” Levin said. “We person precise beardown traction with them.”