NEW YORK – Solar power depends on the solar cell. Wind power, the wind turbine. The key to the green hydrogen economy is a little-known machine with a name out of 1950s sci-fi — the electrolyzer. And after a century of obscurity, the electrolyzer’s moment has come.
The device uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. If that electricity comes from wind turbines, solar panels or a nuclear reactor, the whole process gives off no greenhouse gases. Factories, power plants, even jet aircraft can then burn that hydrogen without warming the earth.
There are other ways to make hydrogen fuel, from natural gas or even coal. But the ways to do it carbon-free, with no emissions that need to be trapped and stored, rely on the electrolyzer.
“I don’t think people grasp what an electrolyzer is,” said Andy Marsh, chief executive officer of Plug Power Inc., which makes the devices. “It is the building block of green hydrogen.”
