Not a reduced dependency on foreign oil, but freedom from oil. Period.

It could mean less pollution.

A halt to global warming.

And no need for war to protect strategic oil interests.

That’s the idea behind Stan Ovshinsky’s work, which deals with safely using hydrogen as a fuel.

“Stan Ovshinsky and the Hydrogen Economy,” written by University of Notre Dame psychology professor George S. Howard, chronicles the lifelong work of Ovshinsky and his wife, Iris, and explains what it could mean for a world that’s becoming increasingly worried about its heavy reliance on oil.

The biography’s introduction was written by the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, former Notre Dame president, who said harnessing a safe and cleaner energy is about more than saving money.

“This is a moral issue,” Hesburgh said. “It’s not just a business issue. It’s a moral issue.”

Hesburgh made the comments last week at a press conference in his office on the 13th floor of the campus library bearing his name.

Howard’s book will only help to spread the word about Ovshinsky’s work, Hesburgh said.

“I think that they have, in their hands, the potential of creating a new kind of world,” Hesburgh said. “It’s important that people get together and dream dreams.”

Ovshinsky, who lives in metropolitan Detroit, has his name on more than 250 U.S. patents. His work in photovoltaics — solar power, for those of us frightened by polysyllabic words — led to the creation of a battery present in almost every hybrid and electric vehicle.

“He’s a completely self-educated person and he’s opened up a completely new area of material science for us,” said Howard, the book’s author. “And more than that, it’s the area that’s going to save our butt.”

At what cost?

The idea of changing the world’s main energy source isn’t new. We used to light our lamps with whale oil, after all.

But don’t expect to see hydrogen fuel take hold tomorrow, said Grant Black, assistant professor of economics and director of the Bureau of Economic Research at Indiana University South Bend.

We’re talking about totally rethinking the way we consume energy, which drives the entire economy. That means two things: It’s expensive and it will take a while to set up the infrastructure, Black said.

Still, scarcity drives markets, and when oil starts dwindling — which is hard to predict — the hydrogen technology might take hold, he said.

“If we feel like oil starts to become very expensive, and you’re paying $10 a gallon, then the public cry for a quicker, better technology will accelerate those things into the markets,” Black said.

And the markets will react appropriately, he said.

“It seems clean, it seems safe in a lot of ways,” Black said. “It seems like the biggest hurdle is the cost of providing that fuel to a consumer market. That, at this point, is excessively high.”

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