No one ever thought cheap energy might be helpful before a few years ago? It's still not useful outside of cars?
The story line in question comes after one where someone has scavenged his tech from broken parts of Iron Man armor and used them in terrorist attacks, and at the same time as he's put together a purely "defensive" Iron Man suit for Pepper Potts called Rescue, and he decides to rebuild his company around civilian applications of the underlying tech,
Iron Man is actually quite interesting in that respect, as a lot of the story lines delve into him struggling with whether or not he should produce weapons to stop bad guys or come up with a design to find a counter to them before a bad guy comes up with the same design, vs. finding civilian applications without inadvertently handing bad guys new weapons. Some of those story lines make poor arguments, but at least the Iron Man story lines are trying unlike FF, I feel, where it's "let's whip up something new amazing before breakfast and then never do anything with it", while Tony Stark grapples with the issues of commercializing his inventions all the time, and often has to deal with fallout from it.
> [Bowie's character] uses the advanced technology of his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth, and acquires tremendous wealth as the head of a technology-based conglomerate, World Enterprises Corporation, aided by leading patent attorney Oliver Farnsworth. His wealth is needed to construct a space vehicle with the intention of shipping water back to his home planet.