Hydrogen technologies have experienced cycles of excessive expectations followed by disillusion. Nonetheless, a growing body of evidence suggests these technologies form an attractive option for the deep decarbonisation of global energy systems, and that recent improvements in their cost and performance point towards economic viability as well. This paper is a comprehensive review of the potential role that hydrogen could play in the provision of electricity, heat, industry, transport and energy storage in a low-carbon energy system, and an assessment of the status of hydrogen in being able to fulfil that potential. The picture that emerges is one of qualified promise: hydrogen is well established in certain niches such as forklift trucks, while mainstream applications are now forthcoming. Hydrogen vehicles are available commercially in several countries, and 225 000 fuel cell home heating systems have been sold. This represents a step change from the situation of only five years ago. This review shows that challenges around cost and performance remain, and considerable improvements are still required for hydrogen to become truly competitive. But such competitiveness in the medium-term future no longer seems an unrealistic prospect, which fully justifies the growing interest and policy support for these technologies around the world.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2019/ee/c8ee01157e

The role of hydrogen and fuel cells in the global energy system

Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called "the economy" and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East.In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy - the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil

1. Introduction 2. Creation under consumption 3. Innovation under competition 4. The evil of intellectual monopoly 5. The devil in Disney 6. How competition works 7. Defenses of intellectual monopoly 8. Does intellectual monopoly increase innovation? 9. The pharmaceutical industry 10. The bad, the good, and the ugly.

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Against Intellectual Monopoly

Nobel laureate Robert Fogel's compelling study, first published in 2004, examines health, nutrition and technology over the last three centuries and beyond Throughout most of human history, chronic malnutrition has been the norm During the past three centuries, however, a synergy between improvements in productive technology and in human physiology has enabled humans to more than double their average longevity and to increase their average body size by over 50 per cent Larger, healthier humans have contributed to the acceleration of economic growth and technological change, resulting in reduced economic inequality, declining hours of work and a corresponding increase in leisure time Increased longevity has also brought increased demand for health care Professor Fogel argues that health care should be viewed as the growth industry of the twenty-first century and systems of financing it should be reformed His book will be essential reading for all those interested in economics, demography, history and health care policy

https://www.marketsandmorality.com/index.php/mandm/article/download/332/321

The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World

Et tu, Grotthuss! and other unfinished stories.

Highly readable, profusely illustrated survey relates technology to historical epochs from earliest times to the onset of the Industrial Revolution, ca. 1750 a.d. and from the mid-18th century to the beginning of the 20th. Food production, metalworking, building construction, early sources of power, development of steam engine, mining, internal combustion machines, electricity and much more. Over 350 illustrations. Bibliography. Indexes. 354 black-and-white illustrations. 1961 edition.

Trevor I. Williams

Papers

A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900

A Short History of Technology

A history of the British gas industry

Drugs from plants.

The State and the Emergence of the British Oil Industry