Photo courtesy of Iowa State University and Iowa Geological Survey Companies are drilling to explore geological hydrogen potential in the state, like this well near Vincent.

Hidden in Iowa’s bedrock could be resources with the potential to launch a lucrative, clean energy economy in the state, but researchers say state actions and corporate interests are burying the ability of others to explore further.

Iowa Geological Survey, Iowa State University and Iowa Department of Natural Resources officials are collaborating to explore — and promote the exploration of — geological hydrogen pooling thousands of feet below ground, deeper than any well and most drilling that’s been completed in the state.

Elizabeth Swanner, an Iowa State professor of Earth, atmosphere and climate, hosted a workshop in April to discuss with other researchers and university officials what geological hydrogen exploration could mean for Iowa’s science and industry. Just a couple of months before, representatives from hydrogen exploration company Koloma spoke with state lawmakers about hydrogen potentials and proposed legislation, which has since been signed into law.

No one knows for sure if a hydrogen economy will grow in Iowa, but Swanner, as well as Iowa Geological Survey officials Ryan Clark and Joseph Honings say they believe it could bring with it opportunities for further exploration and development of other precious resources, like helium.

Matthew Graesch, an environmental specialist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, said while no hydrogen has been brought to market by company exploration, he knows it would be a precious find.

“There’s been no harvest for sale at this point in time, and honestly we don’t know if there ever will be, but we do know that the resource is extremely valuable, and I have to imagine that if it’s physically possible, somebody will harness it at some point, right,” Graesch said. “Because companies aren’t in the habit of just leaving money laying around.”

Geological history leads to hydrogen interest

Iowa’s potential for hydrogen housing was born around one billion years ago with the Midcontinent Rift, a fissure in the earth that once spread across parts of Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The rift, and the lava that seeped from it, created basalt rock formations rich with hydrogen potential.

From a geological perspective, Clark said, Iowa’s bedrock hasn’t seen much exploration, as the lack of an oil and gas industry in the state has cooled any need for deep drilling. Not for lack of trying, however, as exploration more than 60 years ago yielded geological samples and data the Iowa Geographical Survey still holds in its warehouse.

University of Iowa students join hydrogen studies

Undergraduate students at the University of Iowa are also getting involved in hydrogen hype and exploration, Honings said, through a “pet project” he and Clark are overseeing.

The group is going through and modernizing well log data from the mid-1960s and seismic surveys from the 1980s within the context of hydrogen exploration, with work currently under peer review that could point to hydrogen that was previously undetected, just because no one was looking at the time.

Using hydrogen measurements from an Iowa well, Honings said they have also “described the actual system that manifests hydrogen in that well, which is what the cutting edge of industry is trying to figure out.”

“It’s pretty exciting, because we don’t have any funding to do this, but we are rising to meet the needs of exploration interests and responding to the needs of what industry needs, because the enormous potential this would have for Iowans, and it’s been fun because students have also been part of that charge just with their interest,” Honings said.

“We provide all the well data that we have to folks, and then maps of the bedrock, geology, depth to the bedrock surface, because that helps them with some of their interpretations, and really that’s about it,” Clark said. “We don’t have a ton of really deep data that we can provide.”

Each of the experts said more buzz about hydrogen in Iowa started coming in about 2021, and has grown since.

Iowa houses four underground sites for natural gas storage, Clark said, plus one area near Vincent where natural gas storage was drilled for and investigated but never realized. It’s now known that the rocks unearthed from that site can generate hydrogen, and a well with gas sampled in that area by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1969 came out with 96% hydrogen.

Six companies have “actually, really had boots on the ground and spent money here” so far, Graesch said, and a couple of others have expressed interest. Koloma is one of those companies, as well as Snowfox Discovery, Natural Hydrogen Ventures, HyTerra and H2Au in partnership with 45-8 ENERGY.

Graesch called this an “interesting situation,” as companies are required to apply for a permit to drill and to tell the department what they’re doing and what they found from a geological standpoint, but not from an economic one. With the type of drilling, depths that need to be reached and necessary analysis, Clark said exploration holes can cost up to $10 million to develop.

“I actually don’t know if they found what they were looking for, and I don’t think anybody else does either outside the companies, but the fact that they continue to spend money both on research and lobbying leads me to believe that there’s at least a glimmer of hope in their eyes,” Graesch said.

All hydrogen currently on the market has been synthetically produced, Graesch said — an expensive process to either break up water molecules or harvest the gas from oil refineries. If naturally occurring hydrogen can be harvested from Iowa, there could be plenty of economic benefits for localities and landowners.

Each of the university experts agreed that Iowa is starting its hydrogen exploration off at a disadvantage — states like Kansas have an oil and gas industry that has explored bedrock already, Swanner said, and Minnesota has “a lot more connections between universities and state agencies” and “a deeper pool of geological expertise across those groups.”

“We’re really kind of starting from not much — maybe not nothing, but not much,” Swanner said.

Iowa’s hydrogen economy future

Iowa’s trailing of other states in this area will not be helped by legislation passed this year, Clark said.

Senate File 2490, signed June 1 by Gov. Kim Reynolds, extends the period to keep certain information confidential related to drilling projects from 18 months to a minimum of five years, a stretch Clark said could immensely slow any potential hydrogen exploration — as well as drilling for carbon sequestration or minerals. The bill was drafted and pushed by one company that has already drilled exploration holes in Iowa, Clark said. To Graesch’s knowledge, Koloma is the only company to have hired lobbyists in Iowa, and he said the legislation will “have a significant impact.”

“If you can imagine from our perspective, we’re trying to help as many companies as possible, and, you know, to avoid a monopoly, you want more players in the game, and if we can’t share the data with them for five years or more, they’re not as likely to want to come invest their capital in investigating a state where everything is kept behind closed doors,” Clark said.

Questions still remain as to how companies would go about harvesting hydrogen if it’s found, as well as for other aspects of a potential hydrogen economy, and none of the experts could say for sure what the pros and cons of such an economy would be. Graesch, however, has a hard time thinking of downsides.

Unlike oil and gas extraction, which come with “a variety of both permitting and public hazard sort of things,” Graesch said he wouldn’t call hydrogen a contaminant, and hydrogen gas can’t be spilled in the traditional sense. Hydrogen-producing wells would also take up little room, he said, so Iowans wouldn’t notice much of a change in the landscape once drilling equipment has been removed.

Those at the Iowa Geological Survey want to see as much exploration as possible to meet people’s needs, Clark said. One immediate use for hydrogen would be in fertilizer production, he said, and “once the technology sort of catches up,” hydrogen could be used for energy and fuel cell production.

As with any resource extraction, Clark said there would be downsides in terms of drilling and both surface and subsurface exploration, especially when bringing landowner rights into the picture and depending on their feelings about drilling on their property.

“If we do this right, we could potentially be siting processing facilities at the wellhead, essentially,” Clark said. “You know, that doesn’t happen in petroleum, they require extensive transportation networks for things like that, and hydrogen might have the potential to do this in a very planned and deliberate way, where we can kind of minimize some of those cons.”

ISU could help develop extraction technology

One thing Graesch said Iowans should be aware of is the lengthy timeline the development of a hydrogen economy in the state would need, as companies have only been exploring geological hydrogen here for around five years.

“We understand the geology well enough to think that the hydrogen is likely there in reasonable supply, but it kind of now becomes an engineering problem of how do we get it out,” Graesch said.

This is where Iowa State University and its experts in engineering and other fields could come in, Swanner said, if enough interest was generated with funding to back it up.

Some people on campus have already been thinking about what a hydrogen economy in Iowa could look like, Swanner said, and there is expertise across campus as to how to optimize harvesting, potential use pathways and product development.

However, a lack of prioritization at the federal level into hydrogen exploration means most of the money going into it is venture capital funds from companies, and Department of Energy guidelines or recommendations have been delayed, Swanner said. Funding could lead to prioritization and overall further support of exploration and development of geological hydrogen.

“People are excited, and they’re curious, and they see the possibilities, but without any money to, you know, start research projects, it’s a hard sell,” Swanner said.