Photo courtesy Ohio State University
Tom Darrah, a co-founder of Koloma, a hydrogen exploration and extraction startup, likes to draw a parallel from his company to another fuel company also founded in Columbus: Standard Oil.
“I think of it as how Standard Oil was founded. We’re likely to explore in Ohio and around the world, as well as in the U.S., but the exploration engine will be here in Ohio,” says Darrah, the Ohio State University geologist whose research spawned what could become a global name in one of the 21st century’s most promising clean fuels.
Clean hydrogen doesn’t get a lot of attention compared with wind and solar. But hydrogen is already a critical industrial gas. It’s used to make fertilizer, steel and fuels.
Global hydrogen demand is rising and reached 97 million metric tons in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency. The gas also can be used to power fuel cells or be combusted, in which case the only emission is water vapor. Fuel cells can power anything from hearing aids to cargo ships and data centers.
Currently, the vast majority of hydrogen is refined from natural gas or other fossil fuels. A tiny amount—less than 1 million metric tons, according to the IEA—is produced from low-carbon emission methods such as solar-powered electrolysis.