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  Hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant of all the known elements in the universe. You can't find hydrogen as a gas naturally on Earth, because it evaporates out to space quickly due to its light weight. It is only found combined to other elements, such as water and methane. Hydrogen can be synthesized, and so it is being worked more frequently, as of 2010, to attempt to create clean renewable energy for the world. There are several different technologies that are the focus of scientific research and development with hydrogen as the fuel source.
  
  

Fuel Cell Technology

• The idea of fuel cell technology is to create energy with very low waste and pollution. A fuel cell creates electricity using a chemical reaction. Each cell has a positive and negative electrode, called the anode and the cathode. An electrolyte helps bring charged particles between the two electrodes. Hydrogen is used as the fuel in this technology, entering at the anode and losing its electrons to become ionized. These electrons fuel the cell. Oxygen comes in at the cathode and combines with the electrons and the hydrogen, and the byproduct of this process is water. In fuel cells, there is no combustion within the process, making them efficient and separate from thermodynamic laws. There are several different types of fuel cells, but none are affordable or efficient enough to be readily available to the public as of 2010.
  
  

Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines

• There are some vehicles using hydrogen in internal combustion engines, nicknamed HICE vehicles. These are the same type of engines that run gasoline in most of our cars today, but using compressed hydrogen gas instead of gasoline. Hydrogen was used in combustible engines as early as 1820, but this type of energy has only recently regained interest due to stronger focus on climate change and renewable energy. HICE technology is almost as efficient as fuel cell technology, but is much more affordable. It can be easy to get an internal combustion engine to run on hydrogen. Hydrogen is very combustible, and does so at a lower temperature than other common fuels. This means that you can use less fuel and lower temperatures than you usually would to get energy out of the engine, making it more efficient and less polluting. The negatives of this, though, is that if there is a hot spot somewhere in the engine, it could easily ignite the fuel prematurely. The other major disadvantage is that there are few cars being made using this type of energy, and so the filling stations are few and far between.
  
  

Thermo-nuclear Energy

• When hydrogen reaches temperatures similar to that of the sun, nuclear fusion occurs, fusing hydrogen nuclei to create helium. This creates an incredible amount of energy, resulting in a hydrogen bomb. As of 2010, there is work being done to harness this process to create inexpensive clean energy. Thermonuclear reactors would be built, and hydrogen would be fused with other elements to create large-scale efficient energy. The process of using hydrogen more efficiently to create renewable energy is a big focus as concerns about the climate continue to rise.