This simple law is at the heart of the so-called "hydrogen economy", a future world where humanity's energy needs are met by hydrogen rather than fossil fuels.
Until a couple of years ago, isolated pockets of research existed within SA and local companies had little choice but to explore hydrogen possibilities abroad.
Only in 2004 did government become aware that SA had an opportunity to treat its own raw materials and export technologies and products that could place the country in a powerful position in future.
SA's mineral resources and technology assets hold the key to this future.
"In the spectrum of technologies that interconnect to build up the hydrogen economy vision, platinum plays a crucial role as a catalyst that converts hydrogen to electricity (in fuel cells)," said science & technology minister Mosibudi Mangena at the SA hydrogen economy and fuel cells indaba last year.
In addition, SA's nuclear technology and its coal-to-liquids technology could become vital cogs in this hydrogen future.
Since 2004, government has acted quickly. By June this year, government will have articulated a clear strategy that will focus research efforts and chart the course for further innovation and development around the hydrogen economy. A secretariat, housed at minerals processing specialist Mintek, is being formed to co-ordinate activities and support the implementation of the strategy. A baseline study that examines SA's strengths and weaknesses in this field has been completed and will inform the strategy. About 50 local stakeholders and a core team of consultants - two local and two international - will prrovide government with input.
The hydrogen economy is no longer the pie-in-the-sky preserve of futurists and scientists.
While 90% of all commercial energy is generated from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas, these fuels contribute to global warming through the production of greenhouse gases like COČ.
Adding a measure of urgency to this are issues of global politics, energy security, surging energy demand from burgeoning economies, and, more importantly, dwindling oil reserves. Pessimists believe these reserves will run out as early as 2010. Optimists argue for 2050. But whatever the timing, oil reserves are not being replaced as fast as they are being consumed and this will continue to drive up the oil price.
So the search for alternative energy sources is heating up. Renewable sources such as the sun, wind, water and biomass provide clean energy. Nuclear energy, too, does not produce harmful greenhouse gases.
But electrical energy that is produced from the sun or wind needs to be converted into chemical energy if it is to be stored and distributed to a general energy market.
Hydrogen, the world's most abundant element, can store, move and deliver energy in a usable form to consumers in the same way as electricity and liquid fuels do.
There is already a large and growing market for hydrogen, but it is used as an additive in chemical and petroleum refining and in a variety of products, from rocket fuel to peanut butter. Also, because it is produced from fossil fuels such as coal and gas, the hydrogen production process releases harmful emissions into the atmosphere.
In future, though, the focus is likely to be on using hydrogen that has been produced without COČ release, as an energy carrier or a fuel. Future uses include fuel for electricity in internal combustion engines, gas turbines and fuel cells, as well as use in the coal-to-liquids process.
Though platinum provides SA with the most obvious and immediate advantage, SA has a number of other strategic advantages.
The pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) technology is well placed for the hydrogen economy. This is because nuclear-based technologies are at the forefront of new hydrogen production research. "One of the technical challenges the hydrogen economy faces is that a large amount of energy - usually heat or electricity - is needed to produce hydrogen," explains the PBMR's process heat plant design engineer, Rene Greyvenstein. "The PBMR plant produces both heat and electricity. We can harness the heat (called process heat) to produce hydrogen without COČ pollution by applying nuclear heat of 900°C to water to split it into its components - hydrogen and oxygen. At this point there is no other carbon dioxide-free, high-temperature heat source available to mankind."
Because of this, US nuclear technology company Westinghouse has begun the tortuous application process to license the PBMR's nuclear technology in the US.
The PBMR company has partnered Westinghouse, US engineering firm Shaw and Technology Insights, a consulting firm focused on the development of emerging technologies in the energy field, to develop and pilot the PBMR's process heat technology.
"We hope to announce a consortium of global companies within the next two years which will work together to build a demonstration unit for this process heat plant," says the project manager for the PBMR process heat plant demonstration unit, Willem Kriel. "This will be a US$300m-$1,5bn effort over eight years."
British Nuclear Fuels technical director Sue Ion told a packed audience at a British Nuclear Industry conference in January this year that pebble bed technology, as a heat source for hydrogen and other synthetic fuels, gives us "the first real breakthrough" when it comes to providing fuel for the transport industry in the hydrogen economy.
Producing the hydrogen is the first technical hurdle in a long journey.
Once the clean hydrogen has been produced, it can be used as feedstock in a coal-to-liquids (CTL) process to produce clean liquid fuels. Current CTL technology uses coal and water as feedstock as well as hydrogen and oxygen. But CO2 emissions result when coal is burnt to produce electricity for the process as well as to produce the hydrogen feedstock. In the future it will be possible to produce liquid fuels from coal using hydrogen and electricity that has been produced from clean sources - such as nuclear power.
Another link in the hydrogen value chain where SA has some expertise is fuel cells.
"Fuel cells are currently the most efficient way to convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to electricity," says the CSIR's Dawie van Vuuren. Fuel cells are used to power motor vehicles as well as stationary facilities such as small generators.
Eskom took the lead some years ago to develop local skills and technologies in the fuel-cell arena.
"What started out as a R20 000 grant to train electro-chemists 12 years ago has led to the establishment of the Eskom Centre for Electro-Catalysis at the University of the Western Cape," says Eskom's chief consultant for applied chemistry, Gerhard Gericke. The centre, which is now within the globally recognised SA Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry (SAIAMC), has achieved significant fuel-cell breakthroughs in locally produced catalysts and membranes based on nanotechnology.
"This is a leading research institution in the field of fuel cells, electrochemical hydrogen production, hydrogen separation and storage," says SAIAMC director Vladimir Linkov. "Though the world's motor companies are spending fortunes developing fuel cells, and in many countries hydrogen-powered fuel cells, or hybrids of these, are already powering motor vehicles, there are many technical challenges still to be overcome," says Linkov.
A large part of the research is focused on membrane electrode assemblies (MEA), the heart of the fuel cell. "We have developed an MEA with its own characteristics that is on par with the world's best," says Linkov. The team is now testing its research. "If you want to be a player in this market, you must work on it - even if you can't always see what tomorrow holds," he says.
"Even if the hydrogen economy does not materialise, SA will benefit from the development of hi-tech skills and products that will have application," says the department of science & technology's chief director of resources, Boni Mehlomakulu.
For instance, the UWC centre now has eight full-time researchers, six postdoctorates, and more than 30 MSc and PhD students.
In addition, it has attracted skilled scientists from Latvia, Romania, Russia and the Netherlands as well as postdoctoral students from Korea, Bangladesh, China, India and Kenya.
Within the fuel cell is the platinum catalyst. It is in this area that government hopes to build significant expertise. "It is desirable that in the area of catalytic conversion, where platinum is a key component, SA becomes a global knowledge hub," says Mehlomakulu.
Anglo Platinum, SA's largest platinum producer, has begun investing in the development of fuel cells with research partner Mintek. Two years ago it also acquired a 17,5% share of Johnson Matthey Fuel Cells, one of the leading researchers of the platinum market.
Though hydrogen fuel cell technology is in the pre-commercialisation phase, the technology does work and applications that make use of it are becoming evident.
At present, two fuel-cell companies, IST
Telecom, which is a division of IST Holdings, and Intelligent Energy, are
actively marketing their technology to the SA market. They are the pioneers
who are educating industry and proving that there are tangible steps from
today's fossil fuel-driven world to tomorrow's hydrogen-powered world.
Intelligent Energy, which is a local company but licenses its technology from its UK parent, has partnered Afrox, Eskom and Sasol in a variety of fuel-cell pilot projects. "We are learning by doing," says MD Sakib Khan.
Among its projects, Intelligent Energy has installed a fuel cell as a back-up power supply to the Bedford Gardens hospital in Johannesburg. It has also installed a fuel cell in rural KwaZulu Natal to power the automatic water level monitoring equipment which radios dam levels back to Durban Metro Water.
In another application, the fuel cell powered a small vaccination fridge that ran off a 12 V battery in the Eastern Cape. "This area is far from the main sources of electricity production, so the supply is intermittent," says Khan. "Often it is impossible to say whether the vaccinations are still active."
In these cases Intelligent Energy is recovering 50% of its costs from the Business Linkages Challenge Fund, a UK government fund. The remainder comes from local research partners and Intelligent Energy's own shareholders. "We are investing in the future," says Khan, "in technology that people don't know they need."
SA has other superb, but isolated, pockets of hydrogen research. One of these is the research Prof Phuti Ngoepe is doing at the University of the North on the storage of hydrogen.
"Hydrogen is the smallest atom, and so is extremely difficult to contain," says Mehlomakulu. "It is also potentially hazardous, so storage solutions are a critical part of the technology challenge."
What government's strategy aims to do is harness these collective efforts - from research institutions to the private sector - and focus them in one mutually beneficial direction.
"Given our limited resources for R&D compared with developed countries, we have to make informed and bold choices," says Mehlomakulu.