Morten Stahl Interview: Natural Hydrogen’s Low-Cost Potential Draws Growing Investor Attention

NatH2Investing co-founder Morten Stahl has had an interview with The European Business Review.

Natural hydrogen is attracting growing attention as researchers, investors and energy companies examine whether hydrogen generated underground could provide a lower-cost complement to conventional and electrolytic production. 

The opportunity is emerging against a sizeable existing market. Global hydrogen demand reached almost 100 million tonnes in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency, yet low-emissions hydrogen accounted for less than 1% of total production. 

Production cost remains one of the central obstacles to replacing hydrogen currently derived largely from fossil fuels. 

Natural hydrogen presents a fundamentally different proposition because the hydrogen-generation process takes place underground through geological reactions. Rather than using electricity to split water, as with electrolytic hydrogen, explorers search for naturally generated accumulations that can potentially be drilled, produced and processed. 

That distinction could have major implications for economics if commercially productive reservoirs can be identified. 

A 2025 techno-economic study cited by The European Business Review estimated that natural geological hydrogen could potentially be produced for around $0.54 per kilogram under favourable U.S. conditions. 

The estimate remains highly dependent on factors including hydrogen purity, wellhead flow rates and delivery pressure, and researchers emphasized that assumptions ultimately need to be validated with commercial field data. 

The potential geological scale is considerably larger than today's hydrogen market, although uncertainty is equally significant. 

A 2024 Science Advances study produced a most-probable modeled estimate of approximately 5.6 trillion metric tons of hydrogen underground globally. The researchers cautioned that most of this theoretical resource would probably be impractical to recover and that the estimate should not be interpreted as confirmed reserves. 

Even a comparatively small recoverable fraction could nevertheless be meaningful. The researchers calculated that 100 billion metric tons could theoretically satisfy projected hydrogen requirements for reaching net-zero carbon emissions for approximately 200 years. 

Those numbers have helped shift natural hydrogen from a largely academic geological question toward a growing exploration and investment sector. 

Morten Stahl, co-founder of Natural Hydrogen Ventures, told The European Business Review that attitudes toward the resource have changed considerably during the past four years. His firm has invested in or co-founded seven companies across the natural hydrogen value chain, including exploration businesses operating in the United States and Australia. 

According to Stahl, more than 100 companies were exploring for geological hydrogen globally by mid-2026. 

Capital entering the sector has also increased. One of the most prominent examples is U.S. natural hydrogen company Koloma, which S&P Global reported had raised approximately $394 million by 2025. Its earlier financing attracted investors including Khosla Ventures, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and United Airlines’ Sustainable Flight Fund. 

Stahl has also co-founded NatH2Investing, a dedicated natural hydrogen media platform that tracks publicly traded companies with sector exposure through its equal-weighted NatH2 Index. 

Yet the commercial case for natural hydrogen does not necessarily depend on the creation of entirely new hydrogen markets. 

Existing industrial demand already approaches 100 million tonnes annually, with refining and industrial applications driving demand growth in 2024. Fertilizer, chemicals and refining therefore represent established potential customers if natural hydrogen projects can demonstrate competitive production costs, suitable purity and dependable supply. 

Another factor supporting development is the overlap with conventional oil and gas expertise. 

A peer-reviewed 2026 study cited in the article concluded that oil and gas technologies are likely adaptable to natural hydrogen production. Many of the fundamental activities — subsurface imaging, reservoir characterization, drilling, well completion and gas processing — already have mature industrial equivalents. 

The unanswered questions increasingly concern what happens when prospective geological systems are tested at scale. 

Hydrogen concentration alone does not determine whether a discovery can become a viable producing asset. Sustained flow rates, reservoir pressure, gas composition, recoverable volumes, well performance and processing requirements will ultimately influence project economics. 

That is why the sector’s current transition from geological exploration toward drilling and flow testing is important. 

Natural hydrogen has moved rapidly from a resource whose existence at meaningful scale was frequently questioned to one attracting specialist investment, substantial exploration capital and activity across multiple continents. 

The next stage will be more demanding: demonstrating that underground hydrogen systems can repeatedly deliver recoverable gas at the flow rates, purity and costs required by existing industrial customers. 

If that can be demonstrated, natural hydrogen could introduce something unusual into the clean-hydrogen discussion — a potential supply pathway in which nature has already performed the energy-intensive hydrogen-generation step. 

Full press release can be found here [EXTERNAL].