Abstract
Humanity is confronted with one of the most significant challenges in its history. The excessive use of fossil fuel energy sources is causing extreme climate change, which threatens our way of life and poses huge social and technological problems. It is imperative to look for alternate energy sources that can replace environmentally destructive fossil fuels. In this scenario, hydrogen is seen as a potential energy vector capable of enabling the better and synergic exploitation of renewable energy sources. A brief review of the use of hydrogen as a tool for decarbonizing our society is given in this work. Special emphasis is placed on the possibility of storing hydrogen in solid-state form (in hydride species), on the potential fields of application of solid-state hydrogen storage, and on the technological challenges solid-state hydrogen storage faces. A potential approach to reduce the carbon footprint of hydrogen storage materials is presented in the concluding section of this paper.
Highlights
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The so-called noncondensing greenhouse gases (GHG) account for about 25% of the total Earth’s greenhouse effect, providing a stable temperature structure that determines the current levels of atmospheric water vapor and clouds through feedback processes that control the remaining 75% of the greenhouse effect [8]
The use of hydrogen as the future energy vector within the framework of a fully integrated and sustainable hydrogen-based economy could be the solution to the pressing environmental issue caused by the widespread use of fossil fuels as an energy source
Summary
In the last one hundred fifty years, to the second industrial revolution, the life quality of an ever-increasing fraction of the world population (excluding the periods of the 1st and 2nd world wars) has improved sensibly. Due to the increased amount of noncondensing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the average global temperature has risen by approximately 0.7 ◦C over the last century and is expected to rise by approximately 6 ◦C this century. It is clear at this point that, without a prompt and drastic reduction in CO2 emissions, a remarkable and irreversible increment in the Earth’s temperature is expected This is possible only by abandoning the use of fossil fuels as the main energy supply
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