Our motivation:

Be a good ancestor. We are motivated by our desire to be good ancestors. We strive to embody this by pursuing two objectives:

• Firstly, by investing in game-changing industries with immense profit potential, we aim to generate wealth for both our own and our investors' children.

• Secondly, we endeavor to create this wealth through investments that mitigate catastrophic climate change, thereby fulfilling our responsibility as good ancestors for future generations worldwide.

We believe that investing in Natural Hydrogen represents the optimal approach to achieving both profit and impact, thereby fulfilling our commitment to being good ancestors.

 

 

 

Our Sectors: Core Natural Hydrogen

Description: Companies engaged in the exploration of Natural Hydrogen or the development of industry-specific technologies. Examples include:

• Exploration for Natural Hydrogen
• Enhanced Natural Hydrogen production technologies
• Stimulated Natural Hydrogen technologies
• Hydrogen extraction from Geothermal wells
• Stimulated hydrogen production from decommissioned oil and gas wells (with carbon sequestration)

Our Value Add
We add value to portfolio companies in this sector by leveraging our specialization. With an in-depth, comprehensive understanding of the emerging Natural Hydrogen industry, we provide our portfolio companies with technical and commercial support. Additionally, we facilitate connections with technology providers, other investors, project financiers, infrastructure developers, and potential off-takers.

 

 

 

Our Sectors: Related Technologies

Description: Companies that develop or possess products with significant potential in the emerging Natural Hydrogen industry. Examples include:

• Small-scale ammonia, methanol, or SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) plants
• Hydrogen transport and handling technologies
• Compressor technologies
• Gas separation technologies such as membranes
• Drilling technologies
• Exploration technologies
• Hydrogen sensors

Our Value Add
We add value to portfolio companies in this sector by introducing them to the Natural Hydrogen market, often a previously unknown market to them. We connect them with scientists, industry players, potential customers, and pilot projects, thereby facilitating opportunities for growth and expansion.

Targeting Existing Hydrogen Markets

Hydrogen has the potential to replace fossil fuels in numerous industries. However, the realization of this transition depends on factors such as the enactment of appropriate legislation, the development of specialized infrastructure, and advancements in related or competing technologies.

Consequently, the demand from certain industries, despite their promise, may never materialize or may only do so after several years.

Considering that our investment fund operates on a 10-year horizon, we focus solely on companies targeting existing markets for hydrogen. These markets include industries already utilizing hydrogen, which collectively account for more than 2% of global emissions and often lack viable alternatives. The expected annual growth rate of these industries exceeds 5%.

 

 

Why the Green Swan?

Our logo, the green swan, symbolizes our focus on investing in technologies that are rare, unexpected, and potentially transformative in rapidly reducing climate-destructive emissions. Inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's theory on Black Swan events, it embodies our commitment to seeking out impactful yet overlooked opportunities.

Natural Hydrogen:
A game changing new energy source

• Created by nature and widely available
• Produced without CO2 emissions
• As cheap as fossil fuels with a cost of ~$1/Kg
• 2-5 times cheaper than other types of hydrogen
• An existing $130B market
• Potentially avoiding ~40% of world emissions
• Estimated to be able to meet global energy demand for hundreds of years

 

 

About natural hydrogen

Unlike all other types of hydrogen, natural hydrogen does not need to be produced. Instead it is created by nature in subsurface processes. In many places natural hydrogen accumulates close enough to surface to be drilled for and extracted using existing technology. This makes natural hydrogen the cheapest type of hydrogen (~5x cheaper than Green hydrogen) and importantly, it makes the price competitive (without subsidies) to fossil fuels. It is estimated that the earth holds enough natural hydrogen to meet burgeoning global demand for thousands of years. And most importantly, it can be extracted without emitting any CO2. The reason why we did not notice natural hydrogen until now is partly because there was not much demand for hydrogen and because we were looking in the wrong places with the wrong equipment. 

Why natural hydrogen is not “too good to be true”
Until recently it was believed that natural hydrogen could not exist in a “free-state”, since it would quickly react with other molecules. Much recent science has debunked this view, however, it can still be found in old literature (or with scientists who have yet to find out). There are still things we do not know about natural hydrogen as well as the scale of potential commercialization, but there is more than enough evidence to argue that natural hydrogen deserves at least the amount of attention and investment as other potential “climate saving” technologies.

 

The map shows all the places where natural hydrogen has been found by accident. Typically when drilling for oil or water. Imagine how much we could find if we were actively looking for it!

The map is a remake of Viacheslav Zgonnik’s original map published in 2020.

Note: The high density of placemarks across Eastern Europe and Northern Asia is due to the fact that researchers from these regions were looking for hydrogen more frequently, and not because these regions are richer in natural hydrogen.

How natural hydrogen is created

Natural hydrogen is created subsurface in one or more of the following processes:

Serpentinization is a reaction between iron-rich rocks and water (H20). It is basically “rust”, in which the iron rusts by taking out the oxygen (O) of the water (H20) freeing the hydrogen (H2).

This is the favored theory with scientists believing this process to be the source of ~80% of all natural hydrogen.

Radioactive rocks like uranium or thorium splits water (H2O) and frees the hydrogen.

The earth's core, according to a theory, holds vast amounts of hydrogen. Different processes free the hydrogen and let it travel to the surface through the earth's mantle.

Stimulated production that, however, requires mankind to “help a bit”. It is thought to be possible to stimulate natural hydrogen production by pumping down water into sustainable rocks or even pumping microbes or air down in oilfields releasing the hydrogen and letting the CO2 stay down. The last one differs from what is generally meant when talking about natural hydrogen, but the potential result of very cheap and zero emission hydrogen are the same.

 

The first natural hydrogen well

For now, the only natural hydrogen producing well in existence is in Mali, West Africa.

It has been producing for more than 10 years and the gas stream from the well is ~96% hydrogen. It is a low producing well, discovered by accident when drilling for water, but because it is a shallow well it was very cheap to drill. Because of this, it has been calculated that the hydrogen from the well can be produced for $1/Kg (the price at which hydrogen is competitive with fossil fuels). Other companies in the natural hydrogen space believe they can produce at a price closer to $0.5/Kg.  

Unfortunately, Mali is neither the most politically stable or accessible place, so only recently has the company owning the well been able to start further explorations in the area.

The science behind natural hydrogen

Science Magazine article covering natural hydrogen from February 2023

 

Key points

• "There might be enough natural hydrogen to meet burgeoning global demand for thousands of years, according to a U.S.Geological Survey (USGS) model that was presented in October 2022 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America"

• “The more that I read, the more I started to realize, wow, the science behind how hydrogen is produced is sound … I was kind of like, ‘Why is no one talking about this?’”  says Emily Yedinak, a US materials scientist who devoted a fellowship at the Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy (ARPA-E)

• "At the moment, all commercial hydrogen has to be manufactured, either in a polluting way, by using fossil fuels, or in an expensive way, by using renewable electricity"

• "Natural hydrogen, if it forms sizable reserves, might be there for the taking, giving the experienced drillers in the oil and gas industry a new, environmentally friendly mission" 

• “We have the concept, we have the tools, the geology.… We only need people able to invest.” says  Eric Gaucher, a geochemist at the University of Bern

• "He sees room for hydrogen to replace hydrocarbons in heavy-duty vehicles that are ill-suited to batteries: trucks, ships, and perhaps even planes, all of which can handle larger tanks and fewer fueling stations. Industries such as steel that require high-temperature combustion are another likely market" says Dharik Mallapragada, an energy systems researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• "And today’s primary markets for hydrogen—it is needed to make ammonia fertilizers, for example will continue to grow from the current 90 million tons a year(Value $130B)"

• Ian Munro, CEO of Helios Aragon, a startup pursuing hydrogen in the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees, says his break-even costs might end up between 50 and 70 cents. “If it does work, it could revolutionize energy production,” he says

• THE OIL AND GAS industry has punctured Earth with millions of wells. How could it have overlooked hydrogen for so long? ......“The bottom line—they weren’t really looking for hydrogen,” says Geoffrey Ellis, an organic geochemist at USGS. “We weren’t looking in the right places with the right tools.”

• For geologist Alain Prinzhofer, the question of where natural hydrogen comes from is academic. “Maybe we are all completely wrong,” he says. “It doesn’t matter for the industry.” The oil industry sprang up long before it understood oil’s origins, he says"

• The prospects are exciting. But the enthusiasm is all hypothetical at the moment. No one anywhere in the world will produce hydrogen commercially anytime soon—except, perhaps, in Mali." Note: We at Natural Hydrogen Ventures, respectfully disagree on the last point. While it can not be known for sure, enough companies are exploring right now to make it very likely that we will see commercial production before 2025 and announcements of numerous commercial discoveries before that.