Futures Thinking and Sustainable Development

It's likely the biggest question for the future of electric cars: How low can battery cost go, and how fast? Tesla Motors is thought to have the lowest cost-per-kilowatt-hour in the electric-car business, with some estimates suggesting the company is already approaching the crucial $200/kWh level...

A radical new way of producing hydrogen could provide renewable energy sources with the storage option they need to replace fossil fuels. Hydrogen has long been touted as a way to store energy from renewable sources. On the surface, it has great advantages: you can make it from a widely available resource (water) and when burned you get pollution-free water back.

Currently, the major way to produce hydrogen is by reacting natural gas with high-temperature steam. As with coal gasification—another widely used technique—this doesn’t help wean the world off fossil fuels or stop the production of greenhouse gases.

Electrolysis, on the other hand, uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen can be released and the hydrogen stored for burning, or oxidation in fuel cells, when required.