The automotive business has struggled to undertake hydrogen at scale, however industrial customers and information facilities might need higher luck.
Vema Hydrogen inked a deal in December to provide California information facilities, and now it has accomplished a pilot challenge in Quebec to energy business with hydrogen that it produces deep underground.
The startup drills wells in areas with particular forms of iron-rich rock that launch hydrogen gasoline when handled with water, warmth, strain, and a few catalysts. Vema then attracts the hydrogen to the floor and sells it to industrial customers.
“To provide the Quebec native market, which is about 100,000 tons per yr, you would want 3 sq. kilometers, which is nothing,” Pierre Levin, CEO of Vema, informed TechCrunch.
Vema’s first pilot effectively will produce a number of tons of hydrogen per day, and subsequent yr, it plans to drill its first industrial effectively, which can attain 800 meters into the Earth. Vema expects to provide hydrogen from the primary wells for lower than $1 per kilogram, a broadly used benchmark for clear hydrogen.
Most hydrogen immediately is made by a course of generally known as steam reformation of methane (SMR), during which steam is used to interrupt hydrogen molecules off methane from pure gasoline. It’s vitality intensive, and each the method to make steam and the chemical response itself launch carbon dioxide.
Much less polluting sources of hydrogen exist, however they have an inclination to value extra. Hydrogen from SMR prices between 70 cents and $1.60 per kilogram, according to the IEA. Capturing carbon from SMR can add round 50% to these costs, whereas the cleanest course of, which makes use of zero carbon electrical energy to energy an electrolyzer, drives prices up a number of fold.
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June 23, 2026
Stimulated geologic hydrogen, or “engineered mineral hydrogen,” as Vema calls it, guarantees to be one of many cleanest sources of hydrogen, according to the Oxford Institute for Power Research.
As soon as Vema has refined its strategies, Levin expects it to provide hydrogen for lower than 50 cents per kilogram. At that worth, Vema’s hydrogen could be cheaper than another supply in the marketplace.
As a result of the rocks that Vema is concentrating on are broadly distributed, Levin mentioned the corporate will drill wells near corporations that want energy, together with information facilities. California, for instance, has among the largest formations of ophiolite, an iron-rich kind of rock that was pushed up from the ocean backside by plate tectonics.
If Vema can ship hydrogen on the worth it’s forecasting, then a quirk of geology may flip California right into a mecca for information facilities. “You have got a ton of information facilities who’re attempting to get some baseline, decarbonized electrical energy,” Levin mentioned. “Now we have very robust traction with them.”
