A hydrogen economy seems to be evolving as we adapt to the challenges of global warming. Such an economy appears to promise energy with a price less than that from oil.

In this paper, John O’M. Bockris (Haile Plantation, Gainesville, Florida, USA) proposes three new low-cost methods of obtaining clean hydrogen in massive amounts.

In the first method, new technology for converting solar energy and water to hydrogen at a price of $2.50 for an amount of hydrogen equal in first law energy to that in a gallon of gasoline seems to follow from a company’s announcement of their new technology, already working, in one fully industrialized plant, producing electricity at a price corresponding to that from coal.

In the second method, pure hydrogen (no accompanying CO₂) can be obtained from natural gas and heat. The cost would be a little less than that of the low-cost hydrogen from water decomposition. It would also avoid storage of hydrogen for the up to 18 h/day of zero solar light.

In the third method, CO₂ is extracted from the atmosphere and combined chemically with low-cost hydrogen to produce methanol. On being used to produce heat or electricity (fuel cell), CO₂ is left over. However, the amount of CO₂ thus added to the atmosphere is just equivalent to that removed.

The presence of low-cost hydrogen from water means that the resulting methanol will also be inexpensive and combat global warming without requiring a radical change in the method of distribution.

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2008.02.030