How One Element Could Be the Future of Energy

In the absence of fusion power, this is the next best thing

A power plant completed just last year in South Korea uses leftover hydrogen from petroleum facilities to generate electricity. Image by Hanwha Energy.

Over 90% of atoms in the universe belong to a single element. It’s the element responsible for the Solar System’s largest ocean — a vast and vaporous sea somewhere beneath Jupiter’s turbulent cloud cover. And yet this Jovian ocean is made not of water, but is instead a deep chasm of liquid metallic hydrogen. The conditions needed to create liquid metallic hydrogen are too extreme for us to simulate in our laboratories here on Earth, though we do have access to hydrogen in its less extreme gas and liquid form. Already we use around 70 million metric tons of it each year in industries pertaining to chemical and fertilizer production, food processing, oil refineries, and more.

But hydrogen is poised to go far beyond these sectors, revolutionizing everything from the power in our homes to our environmental impact on the planet. In a survey conducted with automotive executives in 2017, over 75% of them believed the true breakthrough in electric vehicles would come not from battery electric vehicles such as Teslas, but from hydrogen fuel cell cars. By 2030 it is possible that hydrogen power will have become a $140 billion industry with over 700,000 jobs.