Current Climate brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability every Monday. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
Cheap green hydrogen seems like an ideal clean fuel, but thus far isn’t being produced at high volume and low cost. That’s because of the need to use iridium, a remarkably pricey and scarce element, in Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzers, devices that make hydrogen by using electricity–ideally from renewable sources–to split water molecules, releasing only oxygen as a byproduct.
Large amounts of hydrogen produced in this way could provide massive cuts in emissions from the production of steel, chemicals and ammonia for fertilizer, and be a carbon-free fuel for vehicles or stationary power generation. But the cost of iridium, about $1,600 per troy ounce, is a major barrier.
VSParticle, a Dutch tech startup, thinks it has a solution. The company, which specializes in advanced nanomaterial manufacturing, says it’s made a breakthrough in nanoporous coating technology that dramatically cuts the amount of iridium needed in a PEM electrolyzer from about 1 milligram-2 milligrams to just 0.1 milligram, CEO Aaike van Vugt told Forbes. And if he’s right, that could cut the cost of hydrogen produced using its tech to as little as $2.30 per kilogram. That’s in line with what industrial hydrogen made from natural gas using steam costs–$1.50-$2.50/kg according to the International Energy Agency. It’s a process that also releases large amounts of carbon.
VSParticle’s tech is being tested by Plug Power, a maker of fuel cells and PEM electrolyzers, and if all goes well, could be deployed commercially as early as 2027. But the tech has bigger implications than just slashing the cost of green hydrogen, van Vugt said. He thinks it can help clean up the global chemical industry, a massive user of fossil fuels to make its products.
“This $5 trillion industry can’t go on like it is. We can’t keep on using fossil fuels as feedstock. We can’t keep on burning fossil fuels to heat up and accelerate reactions to make all the different chemicals we use in our daily lives,” he said. “In the next decades, we need to rebuild the chemical industry. And the only way that we can do it is by accelerating chemical reactions with green electrons. That is the only abundant energy source that we can use to drive most of our chemical reactions, and that is where electrolysis comes into play.”
VSParticle’s Iridium catalyst layer
VSParticle
The Big Read
RJ Scaringe Is Betting Its New Electric SUV Will Make Rivian The Next Tesla
Rivian has had a rocky time since it began selling electric vehicles in 2021. It missed initial volume goals, leading to back-to-back years of weak sales. Then there have been post-COVID parts shortages, inflation and steel and aluminum tariffs. And now, it’s facing a federal administration that’s no fan of EVs. But CEO RJ Scaringe says he’s more optimistic than ever ahead of the company’s next major product launch: the R2 small electric SUV that will go head-to-head with Tesla’s top-selling Model Y.
“I’m very, very biased, but I think R2 is going to drive a step-change in overall EV adoption,” he told Forbes. “Not too different from what happened with Tesla.”
Rivian is starting up production of the R2, which will be tens of thousands of dollars cheaper and smaller than Rivian’s current R1S SUV and R1T pickup, with U.S. sales to begin in early 2026. It’s priced from $45,000, which is below the current average selling price for all new U.S. vehicles. Rivian will have the capacity to build more than 160,000 R2s annually at its Normal, Illinois factory that currently makes its R1 models and EDV commercial vans that Amazon and other companies use. Aside from being priced in line with the top-selling U.S. small crossover category, Scaringe says the R2 will stand out for both its tech inside the cabin, 300-mile range and ability to actually handle off-road driving.
After the challenges of the last few years, it needs to be as good as he claims and a hit with consumers. It’s Rivian’s “make or break vehicle,” said Ed Kim, president and chief analyst for industry researcher AutoPacific. “The R1 [SUV] was a big and expensive statement piece and an introduction to the brand, but R2 is critical. I would say the company’s survival depends on the success of R2 as its volume model.”
Hot Topic
Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, on breaching the 1.5-degree global warming limit
The latest climate data indicate that the world is not doing enough to slow global warming. How do you expect things to unfold in the coming decades?
I think a sober assessment can actually help us in accelerating the pathway toward a good future. The most important first recognition is that we have to admit failure. We are now inevitably going to breach the 1.5-degree Celsius limit that all countries in the world have agreed to avoid within the next five to 10 years. We’re heading toward an overshoot period that will take at least 30 or 40 years before we potentially can bring things back to 1.5 by the end of this century.
That requires a total phasing out of fossil fuels by 2050. It requires scaling carbon dioxide removal. Ideally, it means that no tipping points will occur. It means that the ocean and land systems will continue to suck up half of all carbon dioxide. It’s simply a very optimistic scenario and the best science can offer.
Now, what does that journey imply? Well, it implies 30 to 40 years of moving towards 1.6-, 1.7-degrees Celsius, which we know with essentially no uncertainty will lead to more suffering among billions of people in the world, more fires, more droughts, more heat waves, more disease patterns, more storms. We experienced in 2024, when we touched 1.5 for the first time, how this cost the world more than $200 billion and had extreme impacts.
So we’re in for a bumpy ride, even if we do deliver really aggressively on everything that we promised on paper, but are not delivering in reality. And just to remind everyone: When were we last at 1.5 degrees Celsius of global mean surface temperature rise compared to previous levels? It’s actually over a hundred thousand years ago.
The latest science shows that even the last time we had warm conditions on planet Earth, 120,000 years ago, we barely exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius. So everything we know of the world that we depend on for our prosperity, equity, and life support has never been at this level of warming.
We have a crisis on our watch, and we really have to move very decisively. And let me say also that phasing out fossil fuels, believe it or not, is the easy part of the story. We also need to transform the global food system, and we also need to secure forest systems and all ecosystems on planet earth. And in marine systems and on land, [we have to] continue to store and suck up again 50% of the carbon dioxide from our fossil fuel burning.
It’s a massive global sustainability transformation that has to happen within the next decade and decades to come. Whether we like it or not, we’re in for a jumpy ride, and we need to act fast.
What Else We’re Reading
Trump gets help from China, Russia and other nations to block a global climate deal on shipping pollution (Politico)
How FEMA is forcing disaster-struck towns to fend for themselves (New York Times)
Pedal power remains the most efficient way to travel (Forbes)
Where natural disasters are having the biggest impact on the nation’s food supply (Trace One)
AI data centers, desperate for electricity, are building their own power plants (Wall Street Journal)
Energy Department’s wind and solar cuts could cost the U.S. $500 million in GDP and thousands of jobs (IMPLAN)
America confronts its next great energy crisis: rare earth minerals (Forbes)
