A hydrogen pipeline is being built between Barcelona and Marseille – but can it help in the transition to cleaner energy?

Audio und werbung / Shutterstock

In 1874, Jules Verne wrote in his novel The Mysterious Island:

I believe that one day water will be a fuel, that the hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used alone or together, will provide an inexhaustible source of energy and light, with an intensity which coal cannot; since coal reserves will be exhausted, we shall be heated by water. Water will be the coal of the future.