A hydrogen plasma with intense extreme ultraviolet and visible emission was generated from low pressure hydrogen gas (0.1–1 mbar) in contact with a hot tungsten filament only when the filament heated a titanium dissociator coated with K₂CO₃ above 750°C. The electric field strength from the filament was about 1 V cm⁻¹, two orders of magnitude lower than the starting voltages measured for gas glow discharges. The emission of the H_α and H_β transitions as well as the L_α and L_β transitions were recorded and analysed. The plasma seemed to be far from thermal equilibrium, and no conventional mechanism was found to explain the formation of a hydrogen plasma by incandescently heating hydrogen gas in the presence of trace amounts of K₂CO₃. The temporal behaviour of the plasma was recorded via hydrogen Balmer alpha line emission when all power into the cell was terminated and an excessive afterglow duration (2 s) was observed. The plasma was found to be dependent on the chemistry of atomic hydrogen with potassium since no plasma formed with Na₂CO₃ replacing K₂CO₃ and the time constant of the emission following the removal of all of the power to the cell matched that of the cooling of the filament and the resulting shift from atomic to molecular hydrogen. Our results indicate that a novel chemical power source is present and that it forms the energetic hydrogen plasma that is a potential new light source.