face_with_colon_three circa 2020.
“I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable.” – Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island (1874).
We have come a long way since science fiction writer Jules Verne wrote this visionary sentence, but hydrogen has still not emerged as a major source of energy. ESA is setting out to change this through the latest Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP) call for ideas.
Not only are fossil fuels a limited resource, when burned they also pollute the air with greenhouse gases that warm up our planet. In recent years, we have increased our use of renewable energy – from sunlight, wind and waves, for example – but the machines that generate energy from these sources are made from rare materials that we must dig ever deeper underground to find.
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