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Michigan might be at the forefront of a new clean fuel source. And it’s buried right under our feet.
Last month, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said her administration wants to make the state a hub for geologic hydrogen, a potentially untapped reserve of clean fuel below the Earth’s surface that could power the transition away from fossil fuels.
The U.S. already produces millions of tons of hydrogen a year to power carbon-intense transportation sectors like heavy trucking or shipping, but it’s expensive and requires a lot of energy. Harnessing natural hydrogen could bring prices down and cut more emissions from those industries.
Here’s what you need to know:
How hydrogen forms within the Earth
There are several theories as to how hydrogen forms beneath our feet, according to Matt Schrenk, a geomicrobiology professor at Michigan State University. One theory suggests that hydrogen has been seeping from the Earth’s core since the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago. Other theories have to do with water being split underground, through different geological processes.
Still, all of this occurs deep inside the Earth and naturally-occurring hydrogen isn’t easy to get to without drilling.
Why is Michigan a good place to look for it?
A 2025 study from the U.S. Geological Survey mapped out areas around the country with a lot of potential for buried hydrogen, with Michigan on the higher end.
That’s because the state sits on top of what’s called the Midcontinent Rift. It’s where the North American continent started splitting apart more than 1 billion years ago, then stopped.
“This represents, potentially, a pathway for which deep hydrogen can come up closer to the surface and be collected and extracted,” Schrenk said.
As for possible “hot spots,” think of the state’s lower peninsula like a giant bowl. It’s called the Michigan Basin for this reason. The younger, newer rocks are typically in the center of this bowl or in the middle of the state. Deeper, older material — places where hydrogen might have formed — is found closer to the bowl’s edges, like in Detroit or Traverse City.
Still, the authors of the USGS study noted that much of the hydrogen they outlined is likely “too deep, too far offshore or in accumulations too small to be economically recoverable.”
The climate connection
When burned, hydrogen releases water and heat which makes it a clean source of energy that could reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Because it’s generally hard to access natural hydrogen, industries produce it — hydrogen powers fuel cells for vehicles and is also a key ingredient in fertilizer. More of it could decarbonize sectors where electrification might be too difficult, like the shipping industry. But producing hydrogen takes a lot of energy, usually requiring fossil fuels.
That’s why clean energy experts are excited about potential underground sources. Even though it requires drilling, that requires significantly less energy than producing hydrogen, according to Todd Allen, co-director of MI Hydrogen, a research institute at the University of Michigan.
“You may have some local energy used to run the drill, but the amount of zero-carbon energy you could get if there’s a lot of geologic hydrogen I think is a bigger advantage,” Allen said.
Some challenges ahead
There’s still more research needed to figure out exactly where to drill for it and how feasible extracting is.
“Okay, you find it, is there enough of it to be useful? Is it concentrated enough to be useful? Do you have to drill a hole 20 kilometers in the earth to extract it?” Schrenk at MSU said. “We need the data about where it is to identify whether there are practical solutions to extract it.”
And if large amounts of hydrogen are found, building up infrastructure like pipelines or processing plants is another challenge.
So what does the governor’s executive directive do?
Current regulations around drilling “were all written assuming you’re drilling for something else, say, natural gas,” Allen said.
Gov. Whitmer’s executive order will require state agencies to look at those existing laws and ask if anything needs to change for hydrogen drilling, Allen said. Reports from state agencies like the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy and the Public Service Commission will be filed by April.
It’s still “too soon to tell” how big of an industry this could be, Allen said. “You’re sort of right there at the beginning of the story. And there’s some opportunities for people to sort of nudge that story in a good direction.”
