Renewable energy technology is a tale of two trajectories. Over the past decade, we’ve seen dramatic cost reductions for solar power, wind power, and batteries stemming from a mixture of technological improvements, economies of scale and learning effects. This is all great news for decarbonization, yet a few key pieces are still missing¹. Critically, we need a form of cheap, scalable, long-term energy storage, a means of decarbonizing heavy industry and chemical synthesis, and a form of chemical energy for long-haul transportation where batteries will likely be impractical for the foreseeable future. Is green hydrogen the solution?

To a rough approximation, the process of humanity’s material enrichment is the large-scale solution of separation problems. A disproportionate amount of a substance’s usefulness is derived from the absence of other substances. Water, to take an obvious example, would be a virtually inexhaustible and abundant resource if we didn’t care about the presence of salt in it.

Mastering the separation of a substance—removing undesirable impurities or extracting it from some larger amalgam—is a necessary first step towards commoditization: the process by which production is massively scaled up and costs plummet. It is commoditization that ultimately allows for materials—and the downstream products that require them—to become accessible to the masses.

On June 21, 1961, in a dusty small town in Texas, about 60 miles south of Houston, President John F. Kennedy stepped up to the podium to make a speech before the assembled throngs of people below. Or rather, his aides did. The ongoing Cuban missile crisis demanded his presence in Washington, so he instead gave the speech through a telephone call. The event, however, was deemed of sufficient importance that Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was in attendance.