Electricity from Plants — An Off-the-Grid Way of Lighting Your Room, a Street, a Park

Prometheus, bringer of fire, was punished for the crime of rendering less the sum of human wretchedness (Byron). Can we replace his gift with another? Or will we let the fire we burn, burn us?

by Gaius Publius

In the beginning, before we emerged into civilization, we were given fire as a source of energy — all we had to do was light it.

Now at the other end of our civilized life, we have all the fire we want — all we have to do is not light it.

People are generally pessimistic about the chance our species will escape unscathed the gift of fire that we now so greatly overuse. They think that the warming of the earth will doom most of us in a kind of Great Dying — taking our billions in number down to a fraction of that — and doom the rest who remain to lives more like the Old Stone Age than the NextGen Age of the iPhone 44.

Those that aren't pessimistic about climate solutions fall generally into one of two camps — the party of the "wizards," those who believe that the magic of science will save us without requiring much change in the way we currently live; and the party of the "prophets," those who think that humans must entirely rethink themselves, their lives, their culture, before any solution is possible.

As a small example, wizards see a "smarter grid" and "greener power plants" as a way of serving national energy needs, while prophets see local solutions — rooftop solar, independent village- and town-sized energy facilities — as the only way our species can stay nimble and survive.

Note that the problem being solved by wizards and prophets isn't just a science problem — how to produce our energy — but also a political problem as well. How can a village or town save itself if the national government makes all solutions impossible, as one political party is deliberately does; or promises national solutions that can't possibly work in time, as the other seems to do?

For a nice introduction to these two schools of thought, go here (h/t Naked Capitalism).

Lighting a Room with a Plant

This piece offers a kind of marriage of these two camps, a technologically innovative solution (something wizards will applaud) that nonetheless can be deployed entirely locally (solving the prophets' dilemma).

With this technology, one can light a room with a plant. No plug; just a plant. The technology exists (has existed, in fact, for more than a century) and efforts to scale it up, from a room to a house, a street, and a park, are underway.

The following short video explains it all.

From Deezen.com:

Dutch designer Ermi van Oers has created a lamp that uses a living plant to generate its own electricity – and plans to scale up the technology to power entire smart cities.

Presented at Dutch Design Week, the Living Light uses microorganisms to convert the chemical energy that a plant naturally produces during photosynthesis into an electric current.

Van Oers designed the lamp to be fully self-sufficient, so it can function off-grid, rather than needing to be plugged into an electrical socket.

She has already began to apply the technology – known as microbial energy – to public spaces, and is collaborating with the municipality of Rotterdam to light up one of its parks.

"The potential is huge," she told Dezeen. "Street lights could be connected to trees. Forests could become power plants. Rice fields in Indonesia could produce food and electricity for the local population."

Of course, these are early days for this technology, and the efficiency isn't great — efficiency defined as how much light you get from how much plant.

Van Oers acknowledges that "the technology is still new, and that the Living Light can only produce a small amount of energy in its current form. The plant photosynthesises around the clock. But the lamp takes a day to produce enough energy for half an hour's charge – although this can vary depending on the condition of the plant."

Nevertheless, the wizards among us will appreciate that photovoltaic cells weren't very efficient in their early days as well.

And the prophets among us, who understand that freeing ourselves from the death grip of the already rich is the only way solve this problem, will appreciate the simplicity and independence of this solution. Once the technology is mature and available, no politician-dominated utility commission, for example, can forbid you to use it.

Another Easter Island Solution

This is a form, by the way, of my proposed "Easter Island solution" to global warming:

You're a villager on Easter Island. People are cutting down trees right and left, and many are getting worried. At some point, the number of worried villagers reaches critical mass, and they go as a group to the island chief and say, "Look, we have to stop cutting trees, like now."

The chief, who's also CEO of a wood products company, checks his bottom line and orders the cutting to continue.

Do the villagers walk away? Or do they depose the chief?

There's always a choice ...

Cities, town, villages — and individual people — can simply act on their own and do it. In this case, ignoring the chief deposes the chief. It's a form of secession. And there is always a choice.

For more information, see here. For the underlying technology, the use of microbial fuel cells, see here.

GP