Mark Twain once wrote, “And what is a man without energy? Nothing - nothing at all.”
From the beginning of creation, man’s quest for power has not abated and we are continually searching for the ultimate way to power our lives and our planet. Many energy methods have been tried and pushed aside over the years only to be replaced by more advanced ideas and technologies. But they too have become exhausted.
And so, perhaps we have come full circle as we try to move our focus back to energy produced by what nature has given us--wind, water, the sun—renewable resources that are inexhaustible, yet currently constitutes only 15% of our global energy mix.
As the costs of technologies for gathering energy continue to fall, the various methods for using renewable energy have become economically competitive with fossil fuel utilization and renewable energy products and services are steadily becoming a significant segment in the global marketplace.
Renewable Energy Surges
Here are some numbers that help illustrate this point. According to several recent reports, green energy ventures worldwide surged 17% to $270 billion in 2014, reversing a 2-year drop.
The same reports showed China as the country with the biggest renewable energy investments in 2014 with a record $83.3 billion, up 39% from 2013. The U.S. came in second at $38.3 billion, up 7% for the year but below its all-time high reached in 2011, Japan took third place at $35.7 billion, 10% higher than in 2013 and a setting a new all-time record.
Investments in solar and wind continue to dominate the industry and accounted for 92% of overall investment in renewable power and fuels in 2014. Solar investment soared 29% to $149.6 billion while wind investment climbed 11% to a record $99.5 billion.
Countries that lack domestic fossil fuel resources benefit the most from all methods of energy enhancement. But even countries with sufficient resources see the advantages of renewal energy technologies. A move away from fossil fuels has the immediate result of decreasing greenhouse emissions and local pollution. But more importantly, all countries, especially the smaller developing ones, would be less dependent on global markets for its fuel and become more removed from fuel price volatility.
The need to reduce worldwide reliance on oil to meet our energy needs has become a major consideration of late. Oil producing countries are finding themselves with a glut of the black gold and prices are barreling to new lows on a daily basis. Oil is hovering around $48 and with Iranian crude back in the picture as a result of the new deal with the U.S. and Europe, some analysts predict the price won’t stop its free fall until it reaches $40. How this will affect the global markets is anyone’s guess as governments can step in at any moment and create major changes on the ground that could move prices in either direction.
Economists are always examining new methods to supplement our energy sources and reduce our dependence on oil and researchers aren’t too far behind with their need to reinvent the wheel and develop new technologies that go beyond the current solar and wind mechanisms.
Dancing Creates Energy
A Netherlands based company has come out with an innovative new source of energy—people. The company introduced its first product, the Sustainable Dance Floor, back in 2008 at a nightclub in Rotterdam. Its design was developed exclusively for generating energy by people’s motions on the dance floor.
Michel Smit, CEO of Energy Floors, explains: "We started by thinking how to make nightclubs more sustainable. In one of the first brainstorms someone said, 'why not use the energy of the people? Why not have 1,000 people jumping, running, dancing, going crazy at night – why don't we use that energy to make a positive impact?’ And that's how we started developing these energy generating floors.”
Over the last seven years, Energy Floors has designed several other energy generating products for use in different venues that generate power from peoples' movements such as a Sustainable Energy Floor for high footfall areas as well as a kinetic solar energy floor. The floors are already being used in many countries throughout Europe.
The amount of energy created depends on weight and the type of movement as well as other factors. However, one step on the Sustainable Energy Floor can generate between 2 and 20 joules.
Smit proudly points to a Sustainable Dance Floor that generated over one million joules, or one 'mega joule', in a single evening at a nightclub in Murcia, Spain.
What does this mean to the consumer? 3.6 mega joules translates into to one kilowatt hour which, according to one gas company would supply enough juice for seven hours of viewing time or charge 285 mobile phones for an hour. The kinetic energy created by the Sustainable Dance Floor created enough electricity to power all the lights on the Spanish dance floor.
Energy Floors' Johan Paulides explains how this works. "If you step on it (the floor), then you… have a vertical movement and from that vertical movement we create a very, very high rotational movement which is in the order of 1,000's of rpm. From that we create the electrical energy that can be used.”
The pursuit for the eternal power source continues. The focus on renewable energy resources is exciting and wondrous and will produce new ideas that are way beyond our own imaginations. Tomorrow land stay tuned.
