“That would only be feasible IF the energy cost to produce the catalyst was less than the energy produced by burning the hydrogen.”
I hate to disagree, but that is not correct.
A catalyst is made once and catalyzes the conversion to hydrogen virtually forever with very little degradation, i.e. you make it once and it keeps converting without additional catalyst being made. That is the whole idea behind catalysis.
Lurking’
Well, in that case, it would seem like a great solution. However, what are the chances that we will discover something that would make life that easy?