Meet The Newest Planet Saving Energy Source

The future of renewable energy involves two new power sources – near-magma geothermal and gold hydrogen. This video explains how these two new technological breakthroughs could become a reality, helping us get off our addiction to fossil fuels and potentially saving the planet.

Written by: Gregory Brown
Edited by: Luka Sarlija
Animations by: Max Simmons

Sources and further reading:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36944726/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2078062/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42569-9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01922-y
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00129-1
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320583880_GEO-THERMAL_ENERGY_-_A_GREEN-LANE_TOWARDS_SUSTAINIBILITY
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26134722-100-worlds-first-tunnel-to-a-magma-chamber-could-unleash-unlimited-energy/
https://www.wired.com/2011/02/using-magma-as-a-power-source-not-as-simple-as-it-seems/
https://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-scientists-drill-magma-chamber-source-kmt-geothermal-energy-limitless-2024-1
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/15/grindavik-residents-face-uncertain-future-after-volcano-erupts-again-iceland

Volcanologists studying the inner workings of volcanoes and geologists exploring tectonic Mountain shifts may have just discovered two new power sources that could change the world forever and potentially save our planet in the past 30 years humans have added more CO2 to the atmosphere than they did the previous

30,000 this is because since the Industrial Revolution we have been burning fossil fuels for energy which releases CO2 into the atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect that traps heat near Earth warming our planet and oceans it’s why 2023 was the hottest year on record in order to get off

Fossil fuels we need to ramp up solar wind and nuclear energy but thankfully these two new revolutionary power sources may help us also get off of our addiction to fossil fuels so let’s get into it power source one magma the pressure of the earth pushing down on itself creates such intense temperatures

That under the Earth’s surface there are these magma Chambers which are pools of hot molten rock near the Earth’s crust some of them are so close to the surface that they spew out lava randomly destroying towns and buildings like what happened here in Iceland this is a horrifying scenario and happened because

We don’t know that much about magma Chambers they’re actually kind of hard to find but volcanologists have new technology in order to find and study them the heat energy stored beneath the earth’s surface contains 50,000 times more energy than all fossil fuel resources on Earth combined therefore scientists obviously want to figure out

How to harness this incredible heat as energy and magma Chambers are at the Forefront right now magma chamber research is happening in volcanically active places like Hawaii Mexico Kenya and Iceland which according to new technological breakthroughs may be on the precipice of creating this futuristic energy source we know a lot

About lava but not about magma lava is magma when it hits the surface and reacts with the atmosphere gas is released and the chemical composition changes it is visible easier to study and not capable of being an energy source magma is underground extremely hot and with the proper equipment the

Heat could be extracted to spin turbines and create electricity in order to do this scientists in Iceland are preparing new technology new sensors to go under the ground and hit a magma tramber hopefully the technology will be able to withstand the extreme heat and for the first time in history create what is

Known as the world’s first magma Observatory to do this they will freeze the magma solid using water ahead of a drill bit that will create a sock of glassy Rock then the drill bit can be removed creating this small cavity in the magma they can then put in the

Monitoring equipment to get exact information on the magma chambers’s properties the information will help with volcano eruption prediction but also start the infrastructure of something called near magma geothermal energy an energy source that could change the course of history there are currently geothermal plants that operate around around temperatures of 250° C

Which can involve drilling into warm Rock and circulating water to produce steam that then drives turbines fossil fuel power is more efficient and creates heat as high as 450° C to create steam that drives turbines to produce energy near magma geothermal will operate at temperatures that can compete with

Fossil fuels by producing dry steam at 400° C and higher and creating pressure that is 10 times more efficient than normal geothermal plants this magma chamber research will be essential to understanding how we can create this new energy infrastructure in the future but right now there are a lot of unknowns

The size of the bore hole going into this magma chamber is extremely small so it already starts to make you think that scaling this could be a huge issue but scaling was an issue for fossil fuels in the past and at the beginning of the understanding of that energy source but

Then of course Financial incentives come in technological breakthroughs happen you get things like fracking and all of a sudden you’re burning fossil fuels like crazy hopefully the same can happen for magma there are energy storage issues but if if you extrapolate the technology to volcanically active places

Like Hawaii Mexico and Kenya the energy could be produced and pumped to places nearby decreasing the need for fossil fuels in those areas in Iceland there are talks of how the energy could be produced from the near magma geothermal power plants and potentially pumped to

Europe as well with time money and a new knowledge base there could be ways to use offshore drilling platforms for oil and gas and transferring them to near magma geothermal creating green energy from fossil fuel infrastructure of course it will be a lot easier to start on land and looking at those

Volcanically active countries as new energy markets on the frontier of this revolutionary power source geologists and geophysicists are on the search for something called geologic hydrogen also known as gold hydrogen a colorless and odorless gas that burns without producing CO2 in fact the byproduct of Burning Gold hydrogen is water something

We need and Love Ever since a large Reserve of geologic hydrogen was found in Mali in 2012 a flurry of research has been happening to figure out where else in the world this gold hydrogen may be hiding the world already uses 100 million tons of hydrogen gas as energy

Per year but most of this is created by burning natural gas with steam in order to create it this is not necessarily as helpful you’re needing natural gas and you’re needing energy to produce it but the world would drastically change if we were able to find these hydrogen gas

Stores under the Earth’s surface in 2022 the US Geological Survey estimated that there are trillions of tons of available geologic hydrogen that just need to be found on Earth although Skeptics are more reserved cuz they admit that scientists don’t even really know how this hydrogen gas or gold hydrogen is

Even created it could just be seeping into the Earth’s crust from the mantle below or from groundwater reacting with iron rich minerals in rock the fact that this isn’t fully known shows how new this discovery actually is either way significant deposits have been found in places such as the Pyrenees and haar

Mountains places with complex tectonic activity hydrogen gas is hard to transport and if the reserves are found new pipelines and infrastructure would need to be made it could be worth it though as new AI technology is scanning the Earth for signs of hydrogen reserves and some physicists think that if the

Understanding of how this hydrogen gas is created within the Earth could be understood there are ways that we could stimulate the production of hydrogen and gas creating a new way to make green energy I think it’s easy to be critical of these new ideas and we are in a

Climate crisis so looking at new energy sources may seem daunting but I think it’s important to understand and support new scientific ideas that are trying to help get us off of our addiction to fossil fuels of course we need to ramp up tried and tested and true ideas such

As solar wind classic geothermal and nuclear but I think this new research around near magma geothermal and geologic hydrogen are exciting these could potentially take off and be the new Energy power sources of our future I’m excited I’m curious I’m going to keep learning thank you so much for

Watching we will see you soon and maybe in the future you’re going to be living off magma baby I peace