ROSEI Seminar: Doug Wicks

Description

Doug Wicks, program director at the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), will give a talk titled "Geologic H2—A New Primary Energy Source for the Transition to Clean Energy?" for the Ralph O'Connor Sustainable Energy Institute. Wicks's focus at ARPA-E is on waste-to-energy, critical mineral mining, and geologic hydrogen technologies. Learn more about the speaker.

Directly after the seminar, at noon, there will be a 30-minute discussion of the new ARPA-E request for information about critical minerals and materials.

This is a hybrid event; to attend virtually, please email wick@jhu.edu for the Zoom information.

Abstract:

Hydrogen is viewed by many as a key component of the transition to clean carbon free energy. The International Energy Agency forecasts that 520 million tons of hydrogen from natural gas and carbon capture (so-called "blue hydrogen") and the electrolysis of water ("green hydrogen") will be needed by 2050 to attain climate targets. This represents a more than fivefold increase from current hydrogen production and use. Both routes have significant challenges—blue hydrogen will have fugitive methane releases and the need to store gigatons of CO2; green hydrogen requires large expenditures for renewable energy and critical minerals.

Meanwhile, beneath our feet, the earth has been continuously generating hydrogen, and for the most part humanity did not pay attention to what was right in front of us. This hydrogen is continuously formed by known chemical reactions in the subsurface, sometimes accumulating into reservoirs, sometimes being consumed by parasitic reactions and sometimes seeping into the atmosphere. The chemical potential to form hydrogen is huge, theorized to be in the trillions of tons. Economically harnessing the chemical potential of the earth would be transformational to the U.S. and global economies.