What do Roman Abramovich, Jim Ratcliffe and Peter Hargreaves have in common? You might be thinking of trophy assets like super-yachts or football clubs, but all three have been early backers of the hydrogen economy. The gas has been used for decades in industrial processes such as oil refining and ammonia production – to create fertiliser in agriculture, for instance. However, hydrogen does not occur naturally, except in stars; we can’t dig hydrogen out of the ground and burn it like natural gas. So more than 90% of the 70 million tonnes of the world’s current annual hydrogen production comes from burning fossil fuels.
The attraction of hydrogen is that electrolysers can split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The gas can then be stored and converted to power via a fuel cell; the only waste product is water. Think of hydrogen not as an energy source, but as an energy carrier, like electricity. Elon Musk is not a fan, suggesting that it is “the most dumb thing I
