, to spark thinking about leadership, innovation and digital disruption. These fictitious scenarios aim to challenge conventional mindsets and promote understanding of the future context for business. When Cemvita first coined the term “gold hydrogen” in 2022, we thought it was a bit of a gimmick, a marketing stunt to differentiate themselves from the “green hydrogen” hype. But as it turns out, mining hydrogen with microbes is a real gold mine.
But it has taken Cemvita four years to go from simple lab and field tests to commercialisation of their process. First they had to optimise their genetically modified bacterial “soup”, which is mercifully easy to cultivate in large volumes. Then they had to perfect their patented method of injecting the microbes into old oil wells, where they feed on hydrocarbons and belch out gas.
But until now, hydrogen had to be manufactured from chemical feedstocks or electrically extracted from water, making it costly to produce at scale. The ability to mine hydrogen from abandoned oil wells, making use of sunk costs and stranded assets, has dramatically changed the game. Now hydrogen gas can be produced in reliable quantities, at economical rates — to the delight of the oil companies.
Until now. Quaise Energy has developed a method of drilling deep enough to unlock that energy almost anywhere on Earth. Using a combination of traditional drilling and plasma boring to vaporise the bedrock, the deepest boreholes in the world are delivering superheated water to a 100MW power plant in the US. The next step is to replicate this success at other locations.