Very cool, if true

Without the time to look properly, that oxygen catalyst might be helpful but isn't going to be transformative of the energetics, and hence the economics. Catalysts lower the activation energy of a reaction, but not the energy difference between the starting and end products. So the best catalyst possible isn't going to make the water-splitting reaction anything but hard work in energy terms.

I had this argument with a physics student once back when I was a chemist. He thought if he could only fInd a way of splitting water easily, he'd have a great free source of energy, because you get a helluva a lot out when you burn hydrogen in oxygen. Not sure if I ever convinced him that splitting them apart again must take exactly te same amount of energy, at the absolute theoretical minimum if you had no inefficiency whatsoever.