Gas storage and separations are vitally important to many areas of society. Although it is perhaps easy to appreciate the utility of storing gases, separating one from another is just as significant. In fact, such processes are conservatively responsible for up to hundreds of billions of dollars of global commerce each year. Significant separations include isolating O2 and noble gases from air, as well as isolating short chain hydrocarbons from one another. However, some separations hold more existential significance, like our ability to sequester CO2 from humid fossil fuel emissions. Recently, some of us have shown that aluminum formate [Al(HCOO)3, ALF] is an inexpensive material capable of excellent CO2 adsorption and outstanding CO2/N2 selectivity at elevated temperatures (323 K). Given the low cost of ALF and the specific chemical composition, we also believe it is one of the most promising materials for tackling the megascale problem of CO2 capture. Furthermore, our ongoing work has uncovered that ALF is also an excellent candidate for grid scale H2 storage above non-cryogenic temperatures. In my talk, I will discuss the general structure property relationships of ALF, but also why its behavior deviates from many adsorbents as a function of pressure, temperature, and time. Our findings are supported by a suite of characterization techniques, including in-situ X-ray and neutron powder diffraction, gas-isotherms, gas breakthrough, thermogravimetric analysis, as well as technoeconomic analysis.