7. Can hydrogen from water be a solution?
Apart from limiting CO2 production, climate scientists propose the development of new sources of energy among which hydrogen is more and more regarded as an attractive alternative (Johnston et al, 2005) provided it can be produced from water with regeneration of water after exploitation as source of electric energy according to the following catalyzed reactions: energy + H2O → H2 + ½ O2 → H2O + electricity. So far, hydrogen is primarily produced from fossil resources. Catalytic electrolysis is of interest only if the energy needed to dissociate water in hydrogen and oxygen is produced using environmentally-friendly sources of electricity (Gardner, 2009). What is presently missing to decide whether a source of energy is better than another is a heat-cycle assessment from cradle to grave, as it is currently done with life-cycle assessment to compare processes and materials that impact the environment (Muralikrishna & Manickam, 2017). So far, we did not find any quantitative information relative to heat-cycles of wind turbines and of other CO2-free sources of electricity in comparison with fossil and radioactive sources of energy in terms of thermal impact on the climate. Hydro-electricity may be of particular interest in this regard. However, one can wonder whether large enough amounts of hydrogen will be producible from CO2-free sources of energy. It will be the task of specialists in thermodynamics, and physics together with climatologists and chemists to collect information’s necessary to decide.