Hydrogen energy—a “sustainable development” towards a world energy supply system for future decades

Abstract

Conservative energy usage, that source of “energy” which is available to all industrialized countries and exploitable through technical means and the investment of capital; indigenous solar energy utilization, in its numerous forms of passive usage such as radiation, environmental heat, wind and hydropower, and biomass; and hydrogen energy—after coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy—will become the fifth, sixth and seventh “energies” in the global energy supply system. All three will be independent of energy raw materials and their utilization will be dominated by technological considerations. In the absence of toxicity and radioactivity, they will also be distinguished by a far-reaching ecological neutrality and by a nearly consistent absence of non-internalized defensive or compensatory costs—the economy will grow autonomously. Finally, the new horizons are characterized, for the first time in the industrial energy economy, by inherent corrigibility, even reversibility, and, if need be, terminability, because they are multifold, modular, marketable and are not prone to monopolistic or oligopolistic exploitation. Conservative energy usage, indigenous solar energy utilization and solar energy as commercial commodities are on the rising side of a new and innovative wave of “non-material” goods.