i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 8 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2 5 7 9 e2 5 8 8

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he

Review

The hydrogen economy: Its history

John O’.M. Bockris*

Haile Plantation, 10515 S.W 55th Place, Gainesville, FL 32608, USA

abstract

Keywords: The concept leading to a hydrogen economy lay in the work of a Nazi engineer, Lawaceck,
Hydrogen 1968. I heard his suggestion of cheaper transfer of energy in hydrogen through pipes at
Veziroglu a dinner in that year.
International A paper was published with Appleby in 1972 which was the first published document
Methanol concerning that title and involving the title of A Hydrogen Economy. The first meeting was
Global in Cornell University in 1973. In 1974 T. Nejat Veziroglu organized the first big meeting on
Warming hydrogen (900 attendees).
At this meeting I presented privately to Veziroglu the possibilities of a world develop-
ment and he told me that he was ready to put his organizing ability to use in spreading the
ideas worldwide.
However, he not only proceeded to do this but he, also a professor at the University of
Miami, contributed several papers of notes, particularly the one with Awad of 1974 about
the cost of pollution.
Gregory worked at the Gas Research Institute from 1971 and confirmed the expectations
put down by Lawaceck.
Veziroglu founded the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy in 1974. Research in
hydrogen was relatively low cost and therefore was taken up most eagerly by those from
the newer countries.
The National Science Foundation awarded Texas A&M University in 1982 a five year
support for hydrogen as a fuel with the condition that half the costs be borne by at least five
industrial companies. I was appointed director of the research under the grant and chose to
concentrate upon the decomposition of water by solar light via an electrochemical photo
fuel cell.
We were able to obtain considerable increases in efficiency of decomposition of water
by solar light, and at the time the work was interrupted we had 9.6 percent efficiency for
decomposition.
S.U.M. Khan and R. Kainthla were the principal contributors to the theory of using light
via electrochemical cells for this purpose.
The Texas A&M University work on hydrogen was interrupted in 1989 by the arrival of
claims that one of my former students had carried out electrolysis of deuterium oxide
saying that an extra unexplained heat had been observed and he suggested this heat was
nuclear in origin.
Later, seeking to reduce the cost of hydrogen as a fuel I involved Sol Zaromb in discus-
sions and we came across the idea that if one included a carbon dioxide molecule obtained

* Tel.: þ1 352 335 3843; fax: þ1 352 335 6925.

E-mail addresses: schulz77870@aol.com, Bockris@cox.net.
0360-3199/$ e see front matter Copyright ª 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2012.12.026
2580 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 8 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2 5 7 9 e2 5 8 8

by removing it from the atmosphere in the structure of methanolAT, no increase in global

warming would occur from the use of methanol with that condition, (published in 2008).
By this condition methanol took on the largest advantage of gaseous hydrogen: That it
did not cause global warming. The estimated cost of the new (anti-global warming) fuel,
methanolAT was less than $30/GJ.
This estimated cost could be compared with the $48/GJ which is now being supported
by a French Canadian group who published an attractive book with six pages of calcula-
tions of costs. The difference between the cost estimated by this group and the costs which
have been assumed by hydrogen enthusiasts in earlier times was that they took into
account the auxiliary expenses which would come with the use of hydrogen, in particular
the storage at high pressure.
The characteristics of the new methanol to cause no global warming put that aspect of
it on an equal footing to the gaseous hydrogen. The CO2 which was an essential part of the
structure of methanolAT was necessary to be created in a stream, rather than directly from
the atmosphere, but it was easily shown that this could be done by the use of biomass and
by carbonaceous wastes.
A German team under Weiderman and Grob appeared in 2008 and proceeded to suggest
some extensions of the ideas which had been undergoing publication for some time. The
aim of the German work was to reduce costs of a compound which they called Methasyn.
The present situation is that the claim of methanolAT as a world fuel to be used without
any concerns of exhaustion or pollution depends on the commercial point of view of the
costs being less than that of obtaining oil from the tar sands.
Copyright ª 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights
reserved.

1. Introduction, a beginning
The beginning thoughts which eventually led to a new field,
that of hydrogen as a fuel, and created the first big movement
to forego oil for something less destructive began in 1968 at
a dinner in Stockholm during a scientific meeting. The people
at the table were talking about the transmission of hydrogen
through pipes. They were making a clear point: It might be
cheaper to send energy in the form of hydrogen through
a pipeline rather than sending it in copper wires.1
Returning to the USA full of eagerness to find out whether
this statement I had picked up in Stockholm could be true, the
first person I spoke to technically was Dr. Linden, a member of
the research faculty at the Institute of Gas Technology in
Chicago. Somewhat to my surprise, Linden did not react to my
news with surprise. He mentioned that he had experimented
with electric cars and thought of the use of hydrogen in
connection with transportation.2
Linden thought the rumor that I had heard in Stockholm
lacked detail. He had “a good man coming from England”, and
when he arrived he would put him in charge of the analysis of
the suggestion from Stockholm.
2. The first full publication
The next time I was asked for a contribution to a new journal, I
chose to write about the need for a new fuel and how
hydrogen would fit the need. It was only a note and took up
a column of the new journal, Environmental This Month [1].
I wrote a full paper and chose Dr. John Appleby for my
coauthor and he happened to be in Paris at the time, whilst I
was on a visit to Oxford University. By telephone we arranged
to meet at the Savoy Hotel in London that day and remarkably
enough we managed to make this happen and many of the
ideas which came out of the discussion there were born whilst
we were having dinner at the Savoy.3 The title of the paper
which followed from this collaboration was called, “The
Hydrogen Economy e An Ultimate Economy [2]?”
This paper of six pages was a presentation of hydrogen
taking over from gasoline and making it the basis of an action
as industry was dependent upon it for justifying the use of the
word “Economy”, particularly how you would make the
hydrogen and what its cost would be as estimated in 1972.
Hydrogen as a fuel was of course new at that time and it
sparked off some interest as indicated by the fact that Cornell
University held a meeting on the Hydrogen Economy as early
as 1973. The Cornell meetings took place before the meetings
under the organization of T. Nejat Veziroglu.4 The Cornell
meeting had me as a lead speaker but I could not contribute
until later on in the morning. My paper was called “Electro-
chemical Production of Hydrogen as a Fuel [3].” The paper was
concerned largely with electrocatalysis because the hydrogen
production which was going on in the world at that time (big
plants exist in various parts of the world, e.g., in the Aswan
Dam System) were old in respect to their electrochemistry.

1 3
The statement heard in Stockholm in 1968 is said to have been John Appleby tells me that we made notes on the table tops.
4
based upon the calculations of a Nazi Engineer, Lawaceck. Veziroglu wrote a letter to the President of the American
2
Linden of Gas Technology had been thinking about hydrogen Association of Hydrogen, stating clearly my earlier beginning
in 1968. with the concept of hydrogen as a fuel.
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The first time that the words “Hydrogen Economy” were a stimulus to him to get in the field. On my side, I would like to
published was in the 1972 paper with Appleby. say that I am sure that the field of the Hydrogen Economy,
which I suggested in 1972, would never have bloomed on
towards becoming an event of international importance
without the effort consistently made by Veziroglu.
3. Contributors to the early stages of the
hydrogen economy
3.2. Other contributions of T. Nejat Veziroglu and others
3.1. T. Nejat Veziroglu and the first Miami meeting on
in the development of a hydrogen economy
hydrogen
3.2.1. T. Nejat Veziroglu and his contributions in the early
This was a noteworthy meeting largely because it was orga-
stages
nized by T. Nejat Veziroglu, who later became the undoubted
Because of the stress I am putting here on the role of Veziroglu as
leader and organizer of the various functions connected with
an organizer, I must also mention that he was an active
hydrogen, particularly on the biennial meetings which have
professor at the University of Miami, taught classes, and had
taken place in a number of countries throughout the world.
graduate students. Important scientific papers arose from these
This first meeting was an important meeting, because of its
collaborations. What comes to mind here is a paper by Veziroglu
size, about 900 participants.
and A. H. Awad [5] on the cost of pollution among the more
It was also an opportunity for T. Nejat Veziroglu and I to
important. I used the information of this paper in my second
have a private chat upon which I explained to him the back-
book on hydrogen which I published in 1980 [6]. It was called
ground of the Hydrogen Economy that I had been writing
Energy Options and differed from the first book on hydrogen in
about since 1971. I asked him if he would put all of his orga-
1975 [7] called Energy: The Solar Hydrogen Alternative,6 and
nizing power into spreading the idea of hydrogen.5 He assured
analyzed most of the alternatives to a Hydrogen Economy,
me he would throw himself fully into it. I told him that I would
particularly talking into account for the first time the cost of
be very interested to support him and continue to work on the
pollution from the use of fossil fuels associated with each.
development of all aspects of the Hydrogen Economy, but that
I was going to continue my career as a Physical Electrochemist
3.2.2. The work of Gregory, Ng and Long, 1973
at the University of Pennsylvania and was probably going to
The work which had been foreseen by Linden after I had
spread my activities into various regions, many of which
returned from Sweden was eventually carried out, under
would have some connection with hydrogen.
Gregory and showed a number of lines of costs as a function of
In support of this I recall being at meetings to which
distance [8]. The graph (Fig. 1 below) shows the cost up to 1000
Veziroglu invited me to deliver lectures in places such as Paris,
miles. The basic idea is to show the cost of transporting
France; Moscow, Russia; Beijing, China; Lahore, Pakistan,
hydrogen which lies along the line of least slope versus the
Buenos Aires, Argentina; and in other places.
cost of carrying the energy by electricity at various potentials
At first the content of such meetings were largely chemical
shown on the graph.
and electrochemical, but gradually they opened out into
The hydrogen way seemed to be the lowest cost assuming
something much broader. Certainly, water electrolysis was
that the kilovolts used in the transmission of the electricity
frequently discussed because one could make hydrogen pure
would be 500. Under those conditions the advantage of going
and the anodic reaction was oxygen, for which there is
via hydrogen starts at 400 miles. At any distance greater than
a market, but the major thing is by using the electrolytic
that, it would be better firstly to transform the energy via
method one is able to produce from water any desired amount
electrolysis into hydrogen and push this through a pipe.
of pure hydrogen. Of course everything goes with a cost and
The Gregory, Ng and Long graph for some time reigned high.
the cost of hydrogen from electrolysis can be as low as 3 cents/
The workers in the field took it as an indication that, for long
kWh (2010) but can be predicted as 2 cents/kWh if according to
distance, transfer of energy via hydrogen was the way to go.
Roberts et al. [4], they can harness the energy from the winds
However, many considerations have changed the signifi-
available at 15,000 feet.
cance of this once very important figure. For example the cost
The first Veziroglu organized meeting in Miami turned out
of sending the electricity over significant distances in hydrogen
to set a theme which, largely due to his impetus, was carried
is not only the loss of IR as is assumed in the graph but also the
on around the world. Nejat and I had been close in collabo-
cost of the nickel steel pipes which have to be of that compo-
ration during much of the earlier meetings. Advances my
sition because of hydrogen embrittlement. This is considerable
collaborators made at the University of Pennsylvania in
so that the actual cost of longer distances is quite prohibitive.
respect to the use of hydrogen went firstly to the International
Other reconsiderations have been made too. What about
Journal of Hydrogen where they were published.
the cost of the hydrogen to be reconverted to electricity? The
I would like to take this opportunity of noting the honesty
graph shows the cost of transmitting hydrogen, but that is not
with which this remarkable leader made in being clear about
the intellectual relationship between him and me and 6
Until the early seventies, the only alternative which most
admitting in a letter, which I hold, that my early papers were energy planners in the United States saw to the exhaustion of
gasoline (then thought to be fifty years away) was natural gas and
5
T. Nejat Veziroglu, a Turk, and a graduate of Imperial College, coal. When I published the book the Solar Hydrogen Alternative,
London University (my own alumni) came from his native land it was a novel alternative and the forerunner of much which was
after experience of being president of a company in Turkey. to follow.
2582 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 8 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2 5 7 9 e2 5 8 8
Fig. 1 e Relative costs of energy transmission by electricity cables and by hydrogen pipeline. From Gregory, Ng, and Long,
1971.
what receivers want. They want their electricity back again
and that would cost the fuel cell efficiency of 50 percent, i.e.,
a loss of half of the value of the energy transported.
The present attitude is to minimize the advantage of
sending hydrogen over long distances. Were hydrogen to be
used as a medium of energy in the future, one would have to
minimize the distance between source and sink because of
the cost of transfer through the pipes, including the cost of the
pipes of special steel and need to end up with electricity rather
than hydrogen using fuel cells at 50 percent efficiency.
3.2.3. The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
This journal was founded in 1974, and the Editor at that time
was T. Nejat Veziroglu. He remained in that position until his
retirement in 2011. There is no doubt that the journal is
remarkable in the sense of its rate of growth. Nothing
abnormal was seen until around about the beginning of the
new century and from that time onwards the journal has
taken off and an indication of the growth of IJHE is the
increase in the total pages published each year.
The number of pages published in the year 2000 was 1230 (12
issues), and the number of pages published in 2012 will be 19,426
(24 issues).7 Also, each paper on average is eight pages long. This
means that in 2000 IJHE published some 150 papers, and in 2012
IJHE shall have published more than 2400 papers. Consequently,
IJHE has grown some 16 times over a period of 12 years!
However, the number of copies published does not change too
much and it is around 3500. Most engineers and scientists have
access to Science Direct as their organizations subscribe for that
electronic system of Elsevier. Then, they can easily access the
IJHE electronically. Hence, they do not have to subscribe to IJHE.
The reason for this certainly does not indicate a great
increase in the subject in the United States where the Depart-
ment of Energy specifically noted that it no longer gives special
7
This information was given by Dr. T. Nejat Veziroglu in private
email Correspondence on November 26, 2012.
attention to the growth of hydrogen as a fuel, but it comes from
one of the fruits of Veziroglu’s widely-given lectures in which
he has not only been the origin of so many meetings in far off
countries, but also lectured in still more, and it seems that his
efforts have attracted a number of people who perhaps were
deterred by other substances needing a greater number and
more expensive apparatus for their research.
This is to say that, e.g., high class spectroscopy is used in
examining the surface [9] of electrodes containing adsorbed
hydrogen. But on the whole there are many research subjects
where the starting price is $100,000, and in the case of
hydrogen research it’s possible to start and publish work for
an initial capital outlay of, say, $10,000.
There is another aspect and that is the spontaneity of the
choice of subjects is much a matter of the country. In Italy, for
example, there are what Italian scientists call “the rain” which
is a certain amount of money given to all professorial ranked
scientists to work in whatever direction they want. Some of
them have seen the virtues of hydrogen as the basis of
a revolutionary change in the supply of non-polluting fuels.
This has attracted them to contribute.
Another aspect of the widespread frequency of hydrogen
research work outside the USA is the origin of the abnormally
rapid growth of the journal comes from the organization of
research funding. In the United States this sits in the hands of
the Department of Energy and they divide themselves into
numerous branches and of course one is then dependent upon
the opinion of the scientists in those government groups as to
the work which will be regarded as “suitable” for funding. This
makes the research carried out in the United States on
hydrogen much more restricted and dependent on the influ-
ence which special interests have on research funding.8 If the
DOE group dealing in hydrogen “doesn’t like it anymore” this
8
A scientist working in the DOE group on hydrogen emphasized
this after his retirement. “Funding is little dependent on the
quality of the proposal.”
 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 8 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2 5 7 9 e2 5 8 8
means a government control over what is developed. It’s clear
that there may be outside influences here. For example,
obtaining useable oil from tar sands came to the fore and it may
be cheaper to the consumer than hydrogen because of the
neglect of the environmental costs.
Veziroglu’s way of going about things in hydrogen provided
a spreading effect on interest in developing countries in favor
of clean hydrogen, and a lessening interest in highly-polluting
production of tar sands.
These statements may be modified by alterations in the
state of play which have occurred due to the entry of Professor
George Olah and his team and the two remarkable books
which they have written about the use of methanol [10]. M.
Weidemann has formed a company for the development of
a liquid which he calls “Silent Power” which seems to be
something near to the idea of methanol [11] which I had
suggested in 1975. The strength of the case for a methanol
economy has been radically uplifted by Olah’s books.
3.2.4. The National Science Foundation and its hydrogen
program at Texas A&M University
In the early eighties the NSF had a scheme which was meant to
take subjects which seemed worth developing from the point
of view of industry and giving it support which depended upon
the principal investigator, a University Professor, to whom they
gave the grant. The professor accepted the task of attracting at
least five companies willing to contribute to the work.
There was a competition for funds and after the Founda-
tion had talked to us by telephone, we had to go to Wash-
ington to make presentations. I took with me William Craven,
my former business manager, and I think that this impressed
our NSF committee because it was unusual for a professor to
employ a business manager for his work, most physical
chemists having small groups of only five or six people. My
group at Texas A&M University averaged 20 collaborators.
Bill Craven was a calm and reasonable man who was well-
trained in management including particularly bookkeeping.
Of course the university kept tabs on the grant that we were
going to get as well, but we found that we wanted to know the
state of each grant at any time (Craven plotted graphs of each
grant as a function of time so that we could see how we were
doing at any time during a given academic year.)
We did get the NSF grant. It was a five year grant, though
there was a “but” in it that the funds would be canceled if we
did not keep up at least five companies being interested in the
work and contributing financially to it. It didn’t mean they had
to be all the same companies for five years, but for any one
year we had to start off with assurances from five that they
would fund us for another year.
Obviously, we had given thought to what would be the best
topic to present to the Foundation and show progress in
a relatively short term. My main thought at this time origi-
nated in work that I had done in Australia [12] in which we had
shown that by using two photo-electrodes in our cells that we
were able to get hydrogen and produce electricity. This
seemed to be a good idea to investigate, so we spent most of
our time with the Foundation’s money in that direction.
We discovered the fields of photo-electrochemistry. Now,
the whole thing was to find out what efficiency we could get,
meaning, the amount of hydrogen fuel we could generate
2583
from a certain amount of incoming solar light. One has to be
careful because the temperature in the system must remain
constant and the solar light tends to heat the solution so that
one has to have an IR filter to reduce the fraction of solar light
which is in the infrared which would cause a heating effect.
There are several variables in work like this. One of them is
the rate at which you can run the cells. The higher the current
density (i.e., rate of production of hydrogen) that you can
produce is the goal and there are limiting factors. Some
chemists made an error by going to tables of electrode
potentials in books and finding out what the thermodynamic
potential is for a given reaction and basing their calculations
on this. This is erroneous because it neglects the over-
potential, which is a wasting factor.
We had a lot of difficulty with the anodes and our main
theorists at this time were S.U.M. Khan [13,14] and Ramesh
Kainthla [15]. We produced several full papers on the theory of
the amount of hydrogen we could get taking into account the
properties of these electrodes. But the striking thing that came
to us was that we could not find any n-type semiconductors,
i.e., photo anodes which would work because they ran into
situations where instead of evolving oxygen, they would
anodically destroy the electrodes.
We tried to get around this by coating the electrodes with
layers of an oxide thin enough to allow passage of light
through the coating which reacts then only to the photo-
activated semiconductor.
In such cases the solar light does not interact with the
covering material at all but goes straight through it to the
semiconductor underneath and what happens then is up to
the interaction of the light with the semiconductor [16].
We then found a peculiar thing which put us in contact
with Kohei Uosaki who by then had gone back to Japan. We
found that if you covered the p-type electrodes completely
with the catalyst the cathodic properties were suppressed
instead of being enhanced [17].
What we learned empirically was that we had to have
partial coatings on the cathodes with the catalyst. The metal
catalyst reached to the semiconductor on one-half of the
electrode whilst the light can get through and activate the
photovoltaic properties of the electrode, but for the anodes it is
essential to have inactive coverage and for both electrodes to
have a scattering of catalyst, i.e., partial covering with catalyst.
Kohei Uosaki who had worked with us earlier was quite
negative to what we were doing and told me it wouldn’t work,
but we found it did work and we were able to raise the effi-
ciency of conversion of light to hydrogen and electricity from
one percent up to values pretty near ten percent. (The
maximum we got was 9.6 percent and that needed a temper-
ature rise to about 50  C.)
This took us further away from conventional theory which
had already been worked out by Gerisher, without the use of
surface states.9 The most elementary and basic presentation
9
H. Gerischer: The leader of German electrochemistry for thirty
years, always thought to treat the semiconductoresolution
interfaces as though they had no surface states and no double
layer in the solution. In addition this person used a Gaussian
distribution law instead of a Boltzmannian one for many years
until corrected by S.U.M. Khan.
2584 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 8 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2 5 7 9 e2 5 8 8
of semiconductors is an electrode with valency bands and
conduction bands, but in between is supposed to be an energy
gap and should not be active at all from the point of view of
light. This is how conventional workers in this area tend to
regard the energy gap and the surface states in it with disdain
and as a negative aspect of the electrode.
One of the graduate students working with me in this area,
Anuncia Gonzales, with whom we worked out the surface
state question used surface states in a positive way, i.e., we
could have states in the energy gap which also took place in
charge transfer reactions and increased the overall efficiency
of the reaction.
9.6 percent our maximum this time was not enough to
make a practical working electrode (one would read 15
percent) but it was a significant advance [18].
3.2.5. The contributions of Hampton Robinson
Those who come to work at universities in Texas attempt to
find private means for their work. This is not as easy as it
might seem because wealthy people tend to surround them-
selves with a protective coating of lawyers to whom any
request for money is given for examination and seldom
survives the lawyers’ look because the lawyers, who never
understand the science involved, employ scientists to
comment on it. If the idea in research is a new one, the
scientist finds it easier to be negative. So a request for support
of a scientific project is not great.
We were lucky because Dr. Robinson (who had wealth from
oil) was somewhat different. I don’t know what he would have
done had we asked for large sums of more than a million
dollars but we were quite modest and he himself told us that
he’d much rather give us money on our request rather than
a contract to give us a certain amount per month. We learned
as time went on that it was necessary to create some kind of
emotional aspect to his gifts and this was not difficult because
he regarded the way the universities treated their researchers
as open to criticism. He would never understand why
a university didn’t fund all the research money itself rather
than leaving the researchers to find the money.
Once Robinson had got the idea that we wanted some-
thing there was no formality. He took out his checkbook and
wrote the check. This might be for $100,000, ethis was the
order of magnitude. These were sums which he disbursed,
not only to us but to others. He was reasonably called
a philanthropist.
We used the Robinson money largely in addition to the
National Science Foundation grant. Indeed he was the owner
of one of the companies which funded us.10
Robinson used to make regular visits to our laboratories to
see how his work was getting on and we turned these into
proper scientific consulting meetings and had a coworker who
was supported by his money give 20 min talks when he was
there and of course we went to the laboratory and showed him
10
One particular month we had the industrial contributors
down to four and it was vital to find another company that would
fund us. Dr. Robinson found this easy to do and he already owned
several companies which were inactive and therefore he simply
made one active and it was then considered part of the group,
half funded by NSF.
the results and the apparatus and equipment we were using
and what it did, etc. We also created on one occasion a Grand
Reception for Hampton and his family which lasted a full day
and involved a major banquet.
Would we have been able to succeed without Hampton
Robinson’s money? Probably not, but we should have been
able to do something in five years. It’s a matter of how many
people you can employ and their quality. We were fortunate in
having Dr. Kainthla who was already well versed in photo-
voltaics and S.U.M. Khan who had been a theorist right from
the beginning with his training with me in his Ph.D. days, so
he was very ready to orient his interests into quantum kinetics
and also photo-kinetics. I would say Khan was the most
creative theorist we had [19].
It is sad to say that we had to interrupt all the work we had
started with Hampton Robinson and the National Science
Foundation, but the fact is we were overwhelmed with this
totally new and surprising idea that came to us through
a former student of mine, Martin Fleischmann, that one could
carry out nuclear reactions not only as generally thought at
that time at very high temperatures as in a nuclear reactor, but
were we able to do it in aqueous solutions [20].
This was a revolutionary step that I had to reorient as many
of my coworkers that could agree to work in the new direction
for half a year and after that we were down to a much lesser
number on hydrogen.
4. Contributors to the present stages of the
hydrogen economy (2006 to present)
4.1. The publication of Tappan Bose and Pierre
Malbrunot
Since the beginning of Veziroglu’s attempt to put hydrogen
forward as a fuel to avoid pollution, there has been opposition
to it because of costs. Thus, the attitude of most of the
enthusiasts in the hydrogen field was that the relevant cost
was the cost to produce the gas itself, ethe several auxiliary
costs which were necessary to use the hydrogen in practice
were neglected.
For most of the use of hydrogen for example, you need
storage. The basic idea of using sporadic sources of energy
such as solar and wind automatically ensures that there must
be a carrier gas and of course hydrogen is the obvious one
because it is plentiful from water and non-polluting. So the
cost of storage has to be taken into account which may be
quite considerable because clearly it has to be in special
vessels and at high pressure, as much as 500 atm.
Then, there is the question of transport through pipes and
here I think is the greatest reason as to why the earlier
workers based on Gregory’s estimates went wrong. One tends
to say, “Steel pipes can’t be very expensive. They’re every-
where.” But this unfortunately is not a true statement because
as we are contemplating using hydrogen as a fuel, we’ve got to
take into account a life of ten years at the least for the pipes.
Hydrogen passes through steel pipes and the steel
embrittles after only one to two years so you have to go to steel
which has been developed just because of the hydrogen
embrittlement problem. Nickel steels are more expensive
 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 8 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2 5 7 9 e2 5 8 8
than ordinary pipes made of iron and therefore the number of
miles that you have to pass the hydrogen through in pipes
becomes an important part of the cost.
Then there is another most important point and that is
one has to get the hydrogen back to electricity. It’s a matter of
a fuel cell, but its cost is quite considerable not because
the fuel cells are so much but because the efficiency is not
much more than 55 percent. One normally says 50
percent, ea doubling of cost!11
All this adds up and the people who have done the best
analysis of it all in detail was a French Canadian group led by
Tappan Bose, and Pierre Malbrunot [21].
Their 2006 book was a shocker and I studied it very care-
fully. I redid the calculations and came out with not quite the
same, but something which was not importantly different,
and I have stuck to it ever since. In dollars per Giga Joule (GJ),
hydrogen could be obtained by electrolysis as the gas for about
$20 by electrolysis, and that is the way one needs to do it
because it has to be clean. The only way to do that is by
electrolysis.
So the table of Bose/Malbrunot, Table V, page 87 of their
book [22], but even that doesn’t get you to electricity again. It
gets you back to the cost of hydrogen, and it’s going to be more
than $40/GJ compared with $20/GJ if you take the hydrogen
without considerations of storage, transport and reconversion.
Table V Net cost of compressed hydrogen at delivery as a function of feedstock and production process, from Tappan Bose,
Malbrunot, et al. book, 2006, Table V page 87.
Feedstock Natural gas (steam
methane reforming)
Cost of the 9.30
feedstock ($/GJ)
Before CO2 After CO2
sequestration sequestration
 Production cost ($/GJ) 15.30
 Storage ($/GJ) 1.70
 Transportation ($/GJ) 2.00
 Distribution ($/GJ) 15.70
Net cost H2 ($/GJ) 34.7
From my dinner with John Appleby in London in 1971, I have
carried on with vigor and extreme effort by Veziroglu from the
1970s until the present, but after I studied Bose and Malbrunot
it may be too expensive. Professor Olah and his group came in
and have changed the entire field of hydrogen studies.
5. The contributions and ideas of a methanol
economy made by Bockris and Zaromb
Before I get to present Professor Olah’s contributions in more
detail, let me just bring up one more of those who have
contributed to the present position.
In fact, the Tappan Bose and Pierre Malbrunot book gave
rise to several discussions which Sol Zaromb and I had in
11
If the fuel cell can be used also as a heat source, the efficiency
of the reconversion jumps to 90 percent.
2585
looking at ways in which we could make practical hydrogen to
avoid these constantly reiterated criticisms which hydrogen
had received, that in practice it was just too expensive.12
I had published before on methanol, first in 1975 and then
in 1980, but when you think of it without the change that
Zaromb13 and I have made, the importance of completing the
cycle and avoided the fact that methanol does have the great
advantage of liquidity, but its normal method of manufacture
does co-produce CO2 of which there is no special attention
paid to the matter of zero carbon to produce CO2 in its
combustion and therefore in this way it is no better than
gasoline.
I suppose it must have been over three months or so that
Sol Zaromb and I came to the conclusion that the key to it all
was the origin of the CO2. We took up a reaction which had
been practiced in Japan for some time, namely the direct
combination of hydrogen and CO2 to form the methanol.
3H2 þ CO2At ! CH3 OHAt þ H2 O 1
As one creates the methanol in this way, the CO2 in which
one uses has definitely come from the atmosphere. In making
methanol one removes CO2 from the atmosphere, whilst
burning it replaces the CO2. This is what is called zero carbon
and it means that if you stick to the point here and make the
methanol in that way that you can assert and prove that the
Coal (gasification) Biomass Electricity
(gasification) (electrolysis)
2.60 2.60 17.80
Before CO2
sequestration
17.60 16.80 19.50 29.40
1.70 1.70 1.70 1.70
2.00 2.00 2.00 2.00
15.70 15.70 15.70 15.70
37.0 36.2 38.9 48.8
CO2 you put into it is equivalent to the same as the CO2 you
took out, one has a zero carbon fuel.
We came to this conclusion in 2006, but unfortunately the
delays in publication and so forth came down to the fact that it
did not get into the journal until 2008 and since then I have
been for methanol from the atmosphere [23]. Let us come to
the question of the name in a moment.
Now, Sol Zaromb and I have to say at the end of the article
that it was with Sol Zaromb that I came to the idea, but that we
wouldn’t publish together because in the end we could not
agree.
It is easy to say what held up and it comes down to the fact
that Sol Zaromb wanted to use automotive exhausts as
a source of CO2. It would help immediate acceptance of the
idea. It doesn’t mention the possible doubt of the origin of
12
JOMB in discussion with S. Zaromb 2006.
13
JOMB with acknowledgements to S. Zaromb.
2586 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 8 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2 5 7 9 e2 5 8 8
this automotive CO2 but that it could be an excellent and
immediately applicable idea for getting rid of global
warming.
But I couldn’t accept CO2 from car exhausts as from the
atmosphere fuel: I had often been thrown into the study of
where fossil fuels were made and how. That’s a long story
and also an uncertain one, but I could trace them back to
low beneath the earth at high temperatures and pressures
and very long ago. I’d thought it was stretching to say that
this was CO2 “from the atmosphere”. It certainly isn’t true
that I could prove it is not from the atmosphere, but it
seemed to me to use automotive exhausts is one of the
main reasons exhaust of CO2 is asking for counter
criticism.
6. The contributions of Meyer Steinberg and
V.D. Dang on ideas of a methanol economy
The first proposition for the use of methanol as a major fuel to
replace gasoline was made by J. O’M. Bockris in the book,
“Energy: The Solar Hydrogen Alternative”. This made a six
page presentation of methanol, but it was taken up a few years
later by Meyer Steinberg and Vi-Duong Dang [24,25].
Steinberg and Dang developed the theme of the methanol
in considerable detail compared with what was done later
with Olah (see below) and the present author. The two authors
give a full development of the synthesis of methanol from
hydrogen in CO2, but they have some difficulty with the CO2
which they want to obtain from seawater.
Qualitatively it’s possible to take the CO2 out of seawater.
It’s certainly easier than taking it out of the air, but it’s much
less good if one wants a stream of CO2 to match that from the
electrolyzer than to take it from the biomass or even from
organic wastes.
The massive use of nuclear power which was popular in
the 1970s, of course, is out today and both these things would
make the Steinberg and Dong proposal inapplicable or less
favorable now than when they initially proposed it. However,
much detail is given in their paper and also in the economic
analysis and of course this is favorable to the case in the
economics of the seventies.
7. The revolutionary contributions of Olah,
Geoppert and Prakash
Professor Olah is clear about the fact that hydrogen and
a Hydrogen Economy are burdened by the cost of handling
a gas. (The Bose, Malbrunot paper was published in the same
year as the work of Olah et al. [10].)
Now, the first Olah book does not stress the problem of
CO2 and the need to create the methanol the right way so that
it has the CO2 in it and the synthesis reaction is given by
Reaction 1 above. The most important point is the quality of
the Olah book. That is why I think it is a revolutionary change
and I believe that it will be the means to the future distri-
bution of energy. It is of course clear that Professor Olah’s
status as a Nobel holder played a powerful effect on his
books.
8. From where comes CO2
One of the ideas which came primarily from Sol Zaromb and
has been presented by Olah, is to use the properties of
magnesium oxide if one leaves out momentarily the source of
the air which would have to be a considerable one in order to
make sufficient CO2 per unit of time, but if that is not
a consideration it could be the origin of the stream of air which
the Zaromb method needs and this stream of air could then go
through powdered magnesium oxide at a temperature of
300  C and should form magnesium carbonate, but if you have
magnesium carbonate, the dissociation of that by heat (about
900  C) will give the stream of CO2 that one needs.
So that is the big way of doing it. One takes it from the
atmosphere literally and eventually that is the final source we
would regard as inexhaustible. After all it is returned to the
atmosphere and that is the key to the idea.
But there is another type of way that I have been pushing
and that is to take the CO2 from biomass or any other source of
trapped CO2. Thus:
H2 OAt þ CO2At / CH2 OPolymer þ O2 2
Thus, CH2O represents polymers such as grass, wood, etc.
But there are other ways where CO2 has been trapped,
apart from biomass is rubbish. It’s easy to get the metal out of
wastes and then the rest of it is carbonaceous and upon
burning would present CO2 (plus impurities which would have
to be made into bricks and exported to gas stations and be part
of the methanol forming machinery when the hydrogen
electrolyzes water and it’s combined into the CO2 from the
biomass, whatever the source is. Another source would be
sewage, sometimes available from farms).
9. What should the new use of methanol,
including Co2 from the atmosphere, be called
It was Olah who first suggested that the properties of meth-
anol are sufficiently similar to the properties of hydrogen,
ebut with the important and positive exception that it is
a liquid, ehe suggested that it should be called “Liquid
Hydrogen”.
This is good enough except it is confusing for some because
it might be thought that it was the real liquid hydrogen which
is too expensive to produce, but I think that we can accept the
phrase “Liquid Hydrogen” if we always use quotation marks
on it, i.e., “Liquid Hydrogen” and then in the first use of this.
the name Olah should be appended.
The advantage of making methanol into a zero carbon fuel
needs not only the inclusion of the CO2 from the atmosphere in
the synthesis of the methanol, but one has to ensure a non-carbon
producing the electricity to electrolyze the water and obtain the
hydrogen. Any zero carbon production of electricity will do (solar,
wind, enhanced geothermal) but the cost of electricity is a vital
factor. It is predicted to be 3 to 4 cents/kWh as the cost given for
enhanced geothermal. There are windy places in Michigan where
3 cents/kWh is quoted as a price for wind-based electricity.
In 2012 dollars there is the American Wind Association
who predicts 2 cents/kWh in 2011 currency. It is using the cost
 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 3 8 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2 5 7 9 e2 5 8 8
(2 cents/kWh) that the estimate of enhanced methanol can be
made for < $30/GJ.
10. The methanol economy
We invented a New Age of zero carbon fuel by suggesting
hydrogen and then methanol and enhanced methanol,
a derivation of hydrogen. I want to take the attitude that we
are passing from a Hydrogen Economy to a Methanol
Economy because methanol is a liquid and easily available but
also can be placed into a zero carbon fuel. “At” at the bottom of
the methanol to indicate that this has CO2 in it which has to
come indeed from the atmosphere, and therefore upon being
burned would not give rise to net CO2. That name of “Liquid
Hydrogen” was first used by Professor Olah.
10.1. The Swiss invasion
In 2011 there appeared upon the scene an Herr Weidemann
and he proclaimed that he was going to make methanol the
world fuel.
It’s unclear in advertising material from Mr. Weidemann
how he is going to get the CO2 but perhaps that will come in
a later story.
11. Possible uses of “liquid hydrogen”
One thing which one can add to the story of the new “liquid
hydrogen” prepared “from the atmosphere”, is use in bicycles.
There are about a billion bicycles in China and at the moment
many of them work on batteries, but of course batteries run
out and you have to charge them. It would be much more
interesting if one could have a fuel cell made bicycle and then
carry around in one’s pocket a bottle of enhanced methanol. I
think that methanol for a bicycle fuels is a much better idea
than having to go and try and find a plug in, and so long as the
methanol is made truly from CO2 in the atmosphere and
hydrogen from renewable energy, preferably safe for the
environment. With a billion bicycles utilizing “liquid
hydrogen” as a fuel, this would cause no problem to the
atmosphere.
This seems to me a most helpful to the Chinese and one
could set up a company to achieve necessary technology and
get large sales at once.
The methanol described above can be made with ease
virtually anywhere in this world by utilizing any renewable
energy to give hydrogen through water electrolysis and then,
as mentioned above, biomass or any other trapped form of
CO2 can be burned to provide the needed substance.
This can all be done except for the transfer and packaging
of the CO2 underneath the gas station. It already has the water
and the electricity and so it’s an easy conversion without the
large amounts of money that any other fuel would take.
After that, it’s a matter of good mini-engineering to reduce
the cost and we shall be on to the new fuel. There’s no reason
why we should ever change it. It will live so long as there is
water, air and wind. When methanol from the atmosphere is
available, and gasoline taxed off the market, and with
2587
methanol from the atmosphere a motor fuel, its CO2 could
perhaps be used directly from the exhaust pipe.
12. Conclusions
Ideas which are yet to come such as energy from the atmo-
sphere, which some claim to be a theoretical concept: Well,
yes, one must follow up and test out every concept and where
the economics are reasonable we should not wait too long
because if we go on a sufficient delay we might never get
there. We don’t want to be like the ancient occupiers of Easter
Island who kept on making new canoes and sending off young
people in pairs to find new islands, but one day they had no
more wood.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my assistants and my secretary for their
continued help, without which I would not be able to continue
writing publications on my work. The information gathering
in 2012 for this paper was carried out by Joanna Kern who also
contributed some clarification of the text. Ms. Kern is to be
thanks for improving the document. Mrs. Patricia Schulz also
edited all the versions, making clarifying changes to the text
and is also to be thanked.
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