Outside the city of Thetford Mines, Quebec, in a region that once supplied the world with asbestos, workers are drilling underground in search of an unusual and potentially vast new source of clean energy.
A start-up called Vema Hydrogen has drilled two test wells into the bedrock, each 1,000 feet deep, and is starting to inject treated water into the iron-rich rocks below. The goal is to trigger a special type of chemical reaction that could eventually produce large quantities of hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that may one day play a vital role in tackling climate change.
