Iceland's Hidden Hydrogen: How Volcanic Geology Can Create Clean Energy
Iceland is famous for turning volcanic heat into electricity and hot water. Less well known is that the same volcanic plumbing quietly releases hydrogen gas, and most of it simply drifts into the sky. As the island nation courts India as a partner for geothermal energy, carbon capture, and green hydrogen (George, 2026), a quieter question deserves attention. Could Iceland's next export be expertise in hydrogen that the Earth makes on its own?
Natural hydrogen, sometimes called white or geologic hydrogen, forms underground through reactions between water and iron rich rock, through the breakdown of water by natural radioactivity, and through the release of gases from magma. Iceland sits astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart above a mantle hotspot. That setting produces young basalt, abundant circulating water, and intense heat, which together create nearly ideal conditions for hydrogen to form.
The evidence is already measurable. A 2022 study in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy by Combaudon, Moretti, Kleine, and Stefánsson analyzed fluids from Icelandic hydrothermal fields and found hydrogen concentrations ranging from 0.022 to 20.5 millimoles per kilogram, levels comparable to deep sea vents along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Combaudon et al., 2022). The researchers estimated that Icelandic geothermal power plants released roughly 1.2 kilotons of hydrogen per year in 2019 and 2020. As the authors put it, this hydrogen "is today emitted to the atmosphere but could in principle be utilized" with the right separation technology.
That observation reframes the hydrogen story. Iceland's geothermal plants already drill wells, bring hot fluids to the surface, and separate out noncondensable gases. Carbfix, the Icelandic company that injects carbon dioxide into basalt so it turns to stone, already captures carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide from these gas streams at the Hellisheiði power plant. Hydrogen travels in the same stream. Recovering it would mean adding a purification step to infrastructure that is already built and operating.
New research suggests carbon storage may produce hydrogen as well. At the 2026 European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Phillips and colleagues presented experiments linked to Carbfix's Seastone project in southwest Iceland. They found that when carbon dioxide charged seawater reacted with basalt at about 50°C, the rock produced hydrogen and methane alongside new carbonate minerals, while experiments at 130°C did not produce significant hydrogen (Phillips et al., 2026). If confirmed in the field, a single injection site could lock away carbon while generating a small stream of clean hydrogen.
So what does this mean for the hydrogen economy? The first implication is cost. Green hydrogen from electrolysis must pay for electricity, electrolyzers, and water treatment. Natural hydrogen has already been produced by geology, so the main costs become extraction, separation, and compression. Iceland is also proving that geothermal energy can cut the cost of manufactured hydrogen. An engineering analysis by KBR estimated that Syntholene's geothermally integrated solid oxide electrolyzer demonstration at Húsavík could produce hydrogen at $1.75 to $2.10 per kilogram (Matalucci, 2026). A country that can combine recovered natural hydrogen with low cost geothermal electrolysis would have two of the cheapest clean supply routes anywhere.
The second implication is scale and credibility. A U.S. Geological Survey model suggested the subsurface may hold enormous quantities of hydrogen, and that recovering even a small fraction could meet projected global demand for centuries (Ellis & Gelman, 2024). The bottleneck is knowing where hydrogen forms, where it accumulates, and how to produce it safely. Iceland offers a natural laboratory where active hydrogen generation can be measured at the surface, sampled from existing wells, and studied in basalt that resembles formations found worldwide. Data from Iceland could lower exploration risk for natural hydrogen projects far beyond its shores.
The third implication connects back to India. India holds one of the largest basalt provinces on Earth in the Deccan Traps, and its National Green Hydrogen Mission targets five million metric tonnes of annual green hydrogen production by 2030 (Press Information Bureau, 2023). The India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement, which entered into force on October 1, 2025, gives Icelandic firms a framework to deploy their technology there (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2025). Iceland's Minister of the Environment, Energy and Climate, Jóhann Páll Jóhannsson, said that "India can create opportunities for us to scale up the technologies and know-how that we have already developed in our small country" (George, 2026). Knowledge of how basalt, water, and carbon dioxide generate hydrogen could become part of that transfer.
Caution remains essential. Measured concentrations vary widely between fields, and 1.2 kilotons per year is tiny compared with global demand. Hydrogen is a small, reactive molecule that leaks easily, and underground microbes consume it. Separating low concentration hydrogen from steam and other gases adds cost, and no country yet has a mature licensing regime for natural hydrogen production. Laboratory results on hydrogen from carbon mineralization still need field confirmation.
Still, the logic is compelling. Iceland already vents hydrogen that it could capture, already operates the wells and gas systems needed to recover it, and already leads the world in turning carbon dioxide into rock. Treating natural hydrogen as a resource rather than a waste gas would add a new chapter to Iceland's energy story. It would also give the global hydrogen economy a working model for finding, measuring, and producing the hydrogen that geology provides for free.
References
Combaudon, V., Moretti, I., Kleine, B. I., & Stefánsson, A. (2022). Hydrogen emissions from hydrothermal fields in Iceland and comparison with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 47(18), 10217–10227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2022.01.101
Ellis, G. S., & Gelman, S. E. (2024). Model predictions of global geologic hydrogen resources. Science Advances, 10(50), eado0955. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ado0955
George, V. (2026, October 7). Iceland targets India partnership for geothermal, carbon capture and green hydrogen. Carbon Herald. https://carbonherald.com/iceland-targets-india-partnership-for-geothermal-carbon-capture-and-green-hydrogen/
Matalucci, S. (2026, July 11). The Hydrogen Stream: Pilot project in Iceland shows geothermal-driven H2 could achieve LCOH of $1.75/kg. pv magazine. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/07/11/the-hydrogen-stream-pilot-project-in-iceland-shows-geothermal-driven-h2-could-achieve-lcoh-of-1-75-kg/
Comments