Michigan invests $7.5M to find out if it’s sitting on a clean energy gold mine

Filed 53m ago · Via Grist · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Michigan is putting $7.5 million into research on geologic hydrogen, a naturally occurring, carbon-free energy source that state officials believe may be sitting beneath the Michigan Basin, a geologic formation created over a billion years ago. Kevin Mehren of the Michigan Infrastructure Office calls it one of the strongest decarbonization tools available, saying it could help clean up heavy-emitting sectors like trucking, steel and cement.

The funding follows a 2025 U.S. Geological Survey study flagging Michigan as a high-potential state, alongside Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, where companies are already drilling. Researchers plan to use existing oil-and-gas drilling infrastructure near urban areas like Detroit and Traverse City to search for hydrogen, and hope the state money can attract federal support, though the Trump administration's broader posture toward clean energy leaves that an open question.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Officials are pitching this as the rare energy project that can survive contact with ‘drill, baby, drill’ rhetoric, which tells you plenty about what it takes to get climate research funded in this political climate. Wrap it in a drilling metaphor and suddenly zero-emission fuel sounds like something everyone can agree on — as long as nobody says the word ‘climate’ too loudly.

Source: Read the original at Grist → Scored: Tango de Manzana · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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