The biggest energy news of the decade, of the century, or the millenium?

MIT researchers have figured out how to use inexpensive ingredients, cobalt, potassium, and phosphate, rather than pricey platinum, to create anodes for electrolysis — the process whereby electricity can be used to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen. This could bring about the biggest ever revolution in energy production because this might make it economically feasible to use water as a battery for solar power. The hydrogen produced in this process can be re-combined with oxygen from the air in a fuel cell to re-release the solar energy on demand.

In theory, anywhere you can mount a solar panel, electrodes, some wiring, and tanks for water and hydrogen, you can have a battery that charges itself from sunlight. Which means that power can be produced locally throughout daylight hours — assuming adequate water and sunlight, of course — rather than being pumped from the ground, shipped or piped to refineries, and trucked to gas stations (as with gasoline, for example). The entire energy cycle involves no waste heat from combustion and virtually no pollution (except the byproducts of making and disposing of the solar panels, anodes, wiring, and tanks, of course).

Wind and other sources of electrical power could also be stored in this fashion.

However, hydrogen storage still presents certain obstacles that must be overcome.