Éric Claude Gaucher

Éric Claude Gaucher, born in November 1970, is a French geochemist with an international reputation in the field of geo-energy and geological storage. He is a specialist in the calculation of water-rock-gas interactions. He is actively involved in the energy transition through his work on the exploration of natural hydrogen.

Education
In 1993, he obtained a master's degree in Earth sciences at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (France). In 1998, under the direction of professor of water chemistry, Gil Michard, Éric Gaucher published a thesis on the water-clays interaction for the CEA and the University of Paris-Diderot.

Career
In 1998, Éric Gaucher began his career at the French Geological Survey (BRGM) in Orléans. There he led a research unit working in particular on the stability of clay formations for the management of radioactive waste and the geological storage of carbon dioxide.

In 2012, he joined TotalEnergies, where his work focuses on water-rock-gas interactions from of a laboratory to geological basin scale using experimental, field and numerical modeling methods. His main research objectives are to understand the behavior of carbon dioxide in sediments (e.g. diagenesis, carbon dioxide storage ), he now studies abiotic gases ( dihydrogen, methane ) in natural systems mainly related to serpentinization.

In 2021, Éric Gaucher joined the University of Bern as associate researcher in the Institute of Geological Sciences. His h-index on Google Scholar is 38 in January 2023. In his research of economic gases in France, he also observed how hydrogen sulphide, by its oxidation, is at the origin of large karstic caverns.

In 2022, he founded a start-up specializing in the natural hydrogen exploration, Lavoisier H2 Geoconsult. His company is a partner of 45-8 Energy's Grand-Rieu exploration permit in the Nouvelle Aquitaine region of France.

His research on native hydrogen encouraged him to believe that industrial exploitation of this energy resource was possible, and declared in 2023 that he hoped that investors would take the initiative to launch exploration projects. His last research is focused on characterizing the volume of native hydrogen in Switzerland for industrial production, particularly in the Valais region. He compares the economic potential of native hydrogen to the discovery of oil in 1859 in Titusville by the drilling of Edwin Drake. A first dihydrogen drilling already illustrates this possibility since 1987 in Bourakébougou in Mali.

In 2024, he and Olivier Sissmann were appointed to lead the Task 49 Natural Hydrogen in the Hydrogen Technology Collaboration Program, a program from the International Energy Agency. This international research group aims to "raise awareness of the state of research and industrial exploration of this new energy source" (natural hydrogen).

Notes and references
