In 1874 Jules Verne published Mysterious Island in which he gave voice to Rifkin's seemingly quirky notion of a hydrogen economy. 'Water' he wrote, 'will be the coal of the future'. Within a few decades the Stanley Steamer was a familiar sight on the bridges of New England refuelling from the streams running down the mountainsides. For several years these cars were serious competitors to their more complicated rivals with their explosion motors and sparse network of fuel suppliers. But Jules Verne meant something quite different. 'When America runs out of coal', he wrote, 'water is what they will burn instead. Water decomposed into its primitive elements, and decomposed doubtless by electricity, which will then have become a powerful and manageable force. Water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitutes it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable.'

Fifty years later in 1923, J.B.S.Haldane continued the same thoughts in a lecture at Cambridge University. This is Rifkin's version of what he had to say: 'In four centuries, Britain's energy requirements would be met by rows of metallic windmills working electric motors which in their turn supply current at a very high voltage to giant electric mains. At suitable distances there will be great power stations where during windy weather the surplus power will be used for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen. These gases will be liquefied and stored in vast vacuum jacketed reservoirs probably sunk in the ground ... In times of calm the gases will be recombined in explosion motors working dynamos which produce electrical energy once more, or probably in oxidation cells ... These huge reservoirs of liquefied gases will enable wind energy to be stored so that it can be expended for industry, transportation, heating and lighting as desired ...'

For Haldane, chemistry was the key. When trees are stripped from the hillsides of the third world and the charcoal used for heating and cooking (one of the most efficient methods of soil erosion yet devised by man) Nature gives up ten carbon atoms for each hydrogen atom. When coal is burnt just two carbon atoms go up in smoke with each hydrogen atom. With oil, decarbonisation goes further and reverses the hydrogen:carbon ratio from 1:2 for coal to 2:1 for oil. Natural gas takes this still further with four hydrogen atoms for every carbon atom. So what the world has been doing over the past two hundred years, Rifkin argues, is to deliver more and more energy with less and less carbon. The sensible way forward is to carry on down this road and go hell for leather for a full hydrogen economy.

Over the past few years this view has been steadily winning adherents in the boardrooms of the banks and the automobile companies. In their version of our hydrogen future the good citizen's civic duty will be to drive around the block for a couple of hours after work every night to charge up the global energy grid. No wonder the car makers love the idea. The PR hype will be coming to your Sunday supplements shortly. Rifkin's recent appearances in The Guardian should be seen as the opening salvo in a global war for control of these emerging global energy grids. But there is some sound evidence for his claims.