It has been a demoralising few years for climate change campaigners.
The urgent problem of global warming caused by the overuse of fossil fuels tends only to be a priority for politicians when there are not more immediate concerns at hand, such as financial crises or terrorist insurgencies. Since the biggest adverse impacts of climate change might not be felt for several years, it is all too easy for politicians, and indeed voters, to ignore it.
This week, however, there have been two pieces of good news to cheer up the downhearted. The first is that the ozone layer appears to be repairing itself at last, having been left badly damaged by harmful gases used in aerosols and fridges. This is not only good news in itself but also makes clear that unified international action to protect our shared planet is possible when the political will exists.
The ozone layer problem resulted in an impressive international agreement in 1987 to phase out the chemicals responsible. If world leaders could achieve that, then there is hope they will also, one day, be able to agree meaningful action against climate change.
The second piece of good news is a hugely exciting breakthrough by scientists at Glasgow University in producing hydrogen efficiently using renewable energy. Hydrogen is itself a clean energy source that burns to produce harmless water vapour; crucially, it is also easy to store and transport. Up until now, hydrogen has been produced mainly using fossil fuels, which negates some of its environmental benefits, but the Glasgow team have found a way of producing abundant supplies of the element cheaply and efficiently using relatively low-power loads suited to renewables like solar and wind.
The potential benefits of this breakthrough are manifold. One of the great limiting factors about most forms of renewable energy is the difficulty of storing the power they generate until such time as it is needed. Hydrogen, much like coal or natural gas, can be stored and transported with ease. It comes from water, which is of course hugely abundant in Britain, and burning it poses no threat to the climate.
Technological advances alone cannot halt climate change. Producing energy from hydrogen will do nothing to ease the greenhouse gas effect if the rampant use of oil, coal and natural gas continues.
Governments across the world have an ongoing responsibility to do everything in their power to replace fossil fuels where possible and practicable with renewables and limit the use of energy overall, such as by promoting energy efficiency, encouraging the use of public transport and facilitating district heating schemes and other energy-saving innovations.
In tandem with that, however, science has the potential to overcome some of the biggest limiting factors in the use of renewables: how to store and transport renewably generated power being one of the biggest.
With this research, Glasgow University's team are helping tackle one of the biggest challenges facing life on this planet.
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