Denver startup aims to begin hydrogen mining in 2021

Natural Hydrogen Energy CEO believes extracting hydrogen from the earth’s crust could become the cheapest, least energy-intensive commercial source of hydrogen

Denver-registered Natural Hydrogen Energy hopes to begin the commercial extraction of hydrogen from sites in the American Midwest later this year. It follows the drilling of its first exploratory well in February 2019 and the purchase of mineral leases over what it describes as the most promising geological sites identified during an exhaustive survey process. “Scientists have long been aware of the presence of hydrogen in the earth’s crust, but it was considered a geological curiosity and too small to be of interest,” says CEO Viacheslav Zgonnik, who launched Natural Hydrogen Energy in 2013 after starting research into hydrogen extraction in 2011 as part of a post-doctoral thesis. “Scientis