Natural hydrogen: Abundance
A vast estimate with an enormous margin of doubt
What this tab covers How much of this energy there is: the natural flow or stock, the share that could be harnessed, and how much is used today, compared with world primary energy use (592 EJ in 2024).A USGS model puts the hydrogen in place underground at a most probable 5.6 million million tonnes, about a thousand times world annual energy use, though most is unrecoverable and the range spans seven orders of magnitude. Proven production is a single village-scale field in Mali.
A stock: finite on human time scalesHow much there is
| Measure | Value | Compared with world energy use | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modelled hydrogen in place, most probable value | about 5.6 x 10^6 million tonnes (Mt)5 | about 1,100 times world primary energy (calculated at 121 MJ/kg: about 680,000 EJ vs 592 EJ) | Model range 10^3 to 10^10 Mt; Ellis and Gelman (2024) |
| Illustrative recoverable fraction | about 1 x 10^5 Mt5 | about 20 years of world primary energy (calculated); USGS says enough for projected net-zero hydrogen demand for about 200 years | An example, not an assessed reserve |
| Estimated natural flux from all geological sources | about 23 Mt per year6 | about 0.5% of world primary energy (calculated, about 2.8 EJ/yr) | Zgonnik (2020), about ten times earlier estimates |
| World hydrogen demand, 2024 (for comparison) | almost 100 Mt7 | almost all made from fossil fuels for refining, ammonia, methanol and steel | Low-emissions hydrogen under 1% of demand |
| Lorraine basin, France (estimate) | up to 46 Mt H28 | about half of one year's world hydrogen demand | Inferred from 14% H2 at 1,100 m and 20% at 1,250 m; unconfirmed |
| World primary energy consumption, 2024 | 592 EJ1 | baseline | Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2025 |
These numbers are uncertain to a degree unusual even for new energy resources. The USGS range runs from a thousand to ten billion million tonnes, and the authors stress that most hydrogen is likely to be in deposits too small, deep or dispersed to recover. Exploration licences can now be obtained in around ten countries, but very few wells have yet been drilled.
Lightning, sometimes mentioned alongside natural hydrogen as a 'free' natural energy source, is far smaller and impractical. It strikes about 44 times a second worldwide, and NASA satellite estimates put an average flash at a few billion joules (3.9 GJ for US flashes in June 2020), not the 1 million joules sometimes quoted. Even capturing every flash would yield only about 5 EJ a year (calculated: 44 x 3.9 GJ x 31.6 million seconds), under 1% of world primary energy, delivered in bursts at millions of volts.
Sources
- Statistical Review of World Energy 2025 (74th edition): world total energy supply 592 EJ in 2024 (physical energy content method), the baseline for all vs_world comparisons Energy Institute, 2025
- Model predictions of global geologic hydrogen resources (Ellis and Gelman, Science Advances) US Geological Survey, 2024
- The occurrence and geoscience of natural hydrogen (Zgonnik, Goldschmidt 2020 abstract) Goldschmidt Conference, 2020
- Global Hydrogen Review 2025: Demand International Energy Agency, 2025
- Scientists have found a huge deposit of 'white hydrogen' in France World Economic Forum, 2023