Natural hydrogen firms to support US Air Force base resiliency programme

A US Air Force (DAF) initiative has selected three firms to explore geologic hydrogen as an energy source for its bases, supporting a Congressional mandate aimed at energy resilience.

HyTerra, Helix Exploration, and Prometheus Hydrogen will assist in the eight-month initiative assessing the feasibility and cost effectiveness of replacing diesel generators with hydrogen-fuelled systems at Air Force Bases (AFB) in Montana and Kansas.

It comes after Congress mandated the Department of War – formerly defense – to provide 99.9% energy availability at critical military installations by 2030.

The trio were chosen by Renaissance Philanthropy, which was contracted by the DAF to conduct requests for information to facilitate the study.

According to Renaissance, HyTerra and Helix were selected due to their natural hydrogen exploration activity and the proximity of their projects to the concerned AFBs.

HyTerra has an active hydrogen well in Kansas named the Nemaha Project, while Helix is conducting exploration at a site around 110 miles from the Malstrom, Montana AFB.

Prometheus’ involvement will centre around hydrogen purification, storage, and transport. The firm says its RoadBlox units can store and dispense hydrogen and energy from a stationary or mobile format.

Various militaries have been exploring the use of hydrogen for off-grid applications through microgrid systems.

In 2024, the US’s military base in Hawaii was set to have hydrogen production, storage, and fuel cell technologies installed into an existing 1.5GW solar microgrid.

However, this represents the first time the US will look to use geologic hydrogen, which is formed by natural processes within the Earth’s crust.

Natural hydrogen remains nascent, with extraction technologies still undetermined. While proponents suggest existing oil and gas technologies and processes could be used, .