Vema Predicts Cheap Hydrogen Could Change Where Data Centers Are Built

The automotive manufacture has struggled to adopt hydrogen astatine scale, but business users and information centers mightiness person amended luck.

Vema Hydrogen inked a woody successful December to proviso California information centers, and now it has completed a aviator task successful Quebec to powerfulness manufacture pinch hydrogen that it produces heavy underground.

The startup drills wells successful regions pinch circumstantial types of iron-rich stone that merchandise hydrogen state erstwhile treated pinch water, heat, pressure, and immoderate catalysts. Vema past draws nan hydrogen to nan aboveground and sells it to business users.

“To proviso nan Quebec section market, which is astir 100,000 tons per year, you would request 3 quadrate kilometers, which is nothing,” Pierre Levin, CEO of Vema, told TechCrunch.

Vema’s first aviator good will nutrient respective tons of hydrogen per day, and adjacent year, it plans to drill its first commercialized well, which will scope 800 meters into nan Earth. Vema expects to nutrient hydrogen from nan first wells for little than $1 per kilogram, a wide utilized benchmark for cleanable hydrogen. 

Most hydrogen coming is made by a process known arsenic steam reformation of methane (SMR), successful which steam is utilized to break hydrogen molecules disconnected methane from earthy gas. It’s power intensive, and some nan process to make steam and nan chemic guidance itself merchandise c dioxide.

Less polluting sources of hydrogen exist, but they thin to costs more. Hydrogen from SMR costs betwixt 70 cents and $1.60 per kilogram, according to nan IEA. Capturing c from SMR tin adhd astir 50% to those prices, while nan cleanest process, which uses zero c energy to powerfulness an electrolyzer, drives costs up respective fold.

Stimulated geologic hydrogen, aliases “engineered mineral hydrogen,” arsenic Vema calls it, promises to beryllium 1 of nan cleanest sources of hydrogen, according to nan Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. 

Once Vema has refined its techniques, Levin expects it to nutrient hydrogen for little than 50 cents per kilogram. At that price, Vema’s hydrogen would beryllium cheaper than immoderate different root connected nan market.

Because nan rocks that Vema is targeting are wide distributed, Levin said nan institution will drill wells adjacent to companies that request power, including information centers. California, for example, has immoderate of nan largest formations of ophiolite, an iron-rich type of stone that was pushed up from nan water bottommost by sheet tectonics. 

If Vema tin present hydrogen astatine nan value it’s forecasting, past a quirk of earth science could move California into a mecca for information centers. “You person a ton of information centers who are trying to get immoderate baseline, decarbonized electricity,” Levin said. “We person very beardown traction pinch them.”