9 Hydrogen and Batteries: The Genie and the Bottle (1980–2007)

As early as 1960, Ovshinsky believed that hydrogen could be a key to solving the world's energy problems. His concept of the hydrogen loop, using solar-generated electricity to obtain hydrogen from water, offered a general scheme, but at that time he had no way to store the notoriously combustible gas safely (see chapter 5). “Everybody talked about how hydrogen was the volatile genie in the bottle,” his son Harvey recalled, “but that's not how Dad saw it. From his perspective, the problem was never the genie. It was the bottle.” By 1980, solving that problem had become possible. Ovshinsky had included the concept of a hydrogen-based energy economy in the second proposal he presented to ARCO. In response, ARCO allocated roughly $10 million for hydrogen research over the next three years as part of its sizeable energy grant to ECD (see chapter 6). These funds allowed Ovshinsky to create what was then the largest hydrogen research program in the United States.
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