![]() Run it through a fuel cell and it’s pure clean energy: electricity produced with only water as a byproduct. Hydrogen has been touted as a clean energy option for decades but hasn’t fulfilled its potential. “It’s big enough to be like, ‘Okay, this is exciting.’” ‘It’s All About The Rock’ ![]() So if it’s a trillion kilograms, there’s like $1 trillion of hydrogen out there, some fraction of which can be produced successfully. Michael Webber, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas said:Ī kilogram of hydrogen is worth $1. (He’s also CTO for Koloma investor Energy Impact Partners and declined to comment on the startup.) Growing awareness that the earth contains vast reserves of an odorless, colorless, carbon-free energy source that, unlike oil, gas and the coal that continues to burn beneath Darrah’s hometown, is continuously generated, is a hopeful and unexpected development - particularly as the catastrophic effects of human-caused climate change become undeniable.Įnergy expert Michael Webber, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, thinks there are easily trillions of kilograms of hydrogen trapped underground, though how much can be cheaply accessed isn’t yet known. But if Koloma’s right, it could generate tens of billions of dollars of revenue within a decade. Gates hinted at geologic hydrogen’s potential in a 2022 blog post about the element’s ability to be a clean energy “ Swiss Army Knife.”Ĭofounders Darrah, CEO Pete Johnson and Chief Business Officer Paul Harraka, who’ve never previously discussed the company with the media, won’t say when commercial operations begin. Koloma and its backers see big money: Goldman estimates the hydrogen market will double to $250 billion by 2030 and top $1 trillion annually by 2050. Scientists like Doug Wicks, a program director for the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, see geologic hydrogen as a major new option to displace fossil fuels. Some $9.5 billion for clean hydrogen projects was earmarked in the 2021 Infrastructure Law and a tax credit of $3 per kilogram for zero-carbon fuel was included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. government thinks it’s got a bigger role to play as a carbon-free energy source and transportation fuel and is putting big money behind it. Most of it’s made from natural gas, a process that emits carbon, and most is used for oil refining, making fertilizer, chemicals and food processing.īut the U.S. Right now, the world uses about 100 million metric tons of hydrogen annually, a market worth more than $120 billion, according to Goldman Sachs. It’s backed with $91 million from Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, Evōk Innovations, Prelude Ventures and Piva Capital, making it the most well-funded startup in the space by far. Koloma, quietly founded two years ago and operating in stealth until now, is drilling its first wells in the Midwest, testing rock and gas samples from them at Darrah’s Columbus lab to determine which sites have the best hydrogen volume and purity. And co-founder Darrah, who’s listed on 16 filed patents for finding and efficiently extracting hydrogen, is planning for a future where we drill for hydrogen just as we’ve historically drilled for oil and gas. Koloma, a secretive Denver startup, thinks it’s figured out how to do exactly that. The scale of how much there is is profound.” But no one has tapped into the underground variety and scaled it into a business. That’s because the universe’s most abundant element is carbon-free and has the highest energy content of any fuel by weight. ![]() “The scale of how much there is is profound.”Īs is its potential to temper a looming climate catastrophe already heralded by ever-fiercer heat waves, heavier rainstorms and more violent hurricanes. ![]() A framed photo of Centralia in the years before the fire anoints the wall of Darrah’s office at Ohio State University, where he’s a professor of earth sciences and one of the world’s foremost experts on a new form of underground energy that could dramatically speed the shift away from planet-ruining fossil fuels: so-called “geologic” hydrogen, which has been found in vast deposits along tectonic plates, where conditions are ripe for the lightest element on earth to remain in its pure, gas form.ĭr.
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