Diesel fuel powers everything from shipping to agriculture, and with prices hitting record highs in recent weeks, governments around the world are scrambling to contain the fallout. 

For now, that’s meant releasing fuel from stockpiles, but in the coming years, the answer might be a new technology from an MIT startup called LNK Energies.

LNK has created a way to convert existing heavy-duty trucks from diesel to hydrogen, slashing pollution and costs while shielding operators from the price spikes that result from geopolitical instability like the war in Iran. “If you look at total cost of ownership of a Class 8 truck, it’s 13% cheaper than diesel,” Alexis Huynh, chief technology officer at LNK Energies, told TechCrunch. (Class 8 is the heaviest category of trucks, including big rigs.)

Automotive companies have been exploring the use of hydrogen in long-haul trucking in part because refilling a hydrogen tank is faster than recharging the massive batteries those trucks require. But hydrogen is challenging to move to refilling stations, and the pressure tanks required to store it on the truck are large and costly. 

LNK’s approach is to carry hydrogen chemically attached to another compound. Liquid organic hydrogen carriers, or LOHCs, are liquids that can absorb and later release hydrogen, and they have been widely studied, but mostly for moving large quantities of hydrogen from refineries to fueling stations. The equipment needed to separate hydrogen from the LOHC, known as a reactor, has been too big to fit onto a truck.

“A lot of the reactors that LOHC companies have today are really large.

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