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At the pace we're moving, vital fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are projected to deplete in approximately 75 years. With our complete reliance on these resources for everyday life, it’s putting immense pressure on scientists to find new, sustainable energy solutions.
Luckily, researchers are rising to the occasion like true innovators. Here are ten extraordinary methods we’re harnessing nature to produce electricity, revolutionize food production, and clear the air for a cleaner planet.
10. Repurposing Lightning Strikes to Recycle Concrete
Concrete—a blend of cement, stone, and water—is one of the most affordable and widely used construction materials worldwide. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to recycle, meaning that debris from demolished buildings, bridges, and roads typically ends up as waste.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics has come up with a solution: strike the concrete with lightning. Surprisingly, it works. When powerful electrical pulses hit the concrete, the energy travels between the materials, breaking the bonds that hold them together—resulting in a pile of concrete components that can be used to create new concrete.
9. Self-Healing Concrete
Instead of focusing on recycling concrete, researchers in the Netherlands are working on a method to repair it—automatically. Henk Jonkers and his team are developing a type of concrete infused with living bacteria. When water causes cracks, the bacteria activate and release a waste product called calcite, which closely resembles limestone—effectively repairing the concrete.
8. Solar Cells That Deconstruct Sunlight to Capture Color
Despite their widespread use, solar cells are typically only about 11–15 percent efficient. This efficiency is calculated by comparing the energy they generate to the sunlight that strikes them. DARPA is developing a solar energy system that could more than double this efficiency by deconstructing sunlight and capturing the wavelengths of each individual color.
By using nanomaterials—some of which are smaller than light wavelengths—the system can separate each color and direct it to a cell designed to absorb that specific wavelength. In doing so, they aim to create solar cells that don’t need to react to the full spectrum of light—just one particular color. DARPA expects these solar cells to achieve up to 50% efficiency, far surpassing anything we have today.
7. A Wind Turbine that Generates Power Without Wind
Wind is a naturally occurring resource, but the challenge is that we can’t control it; when the wind ceases, wind turbines stop generating power. Surprisingly, Apple has come up with a solution. In June 2011, Apple filed a patent for a wind turbine that transforms wind energy into heat, allowing it to continue generating power even when the blades aren't turning.
Traditional windmills have followed the same basic principles for thousands of years: wind turns the blades, creating energy. Apple’s wind turbine does this too, but it also harnesses heat from friction and stores it.
6. A Self-Sustaining Food System Camouflaged as Corporate Art
A Japanese retail company has created an aquaponics system that’s being showcased as an art installation in hospitals and nursing homes. The system can grow both fish and plants; the fish's nitrate waste serves as fertilizer for the plants. Meanwhile, the plants filter and purify the water, which is then recirculated back into the fish tank—just like a natural ecosystem (such as a pond). While it doesn’t generate energy, it also doesn’t consume any either.
Similar large-scale systems are being developed to provide renewable food sources in regions that lack sufficient water. Because the water continuously cycles through the system, desert areas with little rainfall can use it as an effective method for producing food year-round.
5. A 14-Year-Old Creates a Solar-Powered Water Purifier for Developing Nations
At just 14 years old, Deepika Kurup is already making a difference. After discovering that children in India often drink stagnant, bacteria-laden water due to the lack of clean water sources, she invented a solar-powered water purifier so affordable it costs just a few cents. The purifier works by exposing a mixture of zinc oxide and titanium oxide to sunlight, triggering a reaction that eradicates bacteria in the water.
How effective is it? After just a few hours of sunlight exposure, the solar purification system can completely eradicate E. coli bacteria and decrease coliform bacteria from 8,000 to just 50, providing safe, clean drinking water even in regions with no electricity.
4. A Power Generator Fueled by Human Urine
In Nigeria, four students have developed a power generator that runs on one resource that’s always accessible—human urine. The device uses electrolysis to extract hydrogen gas from urine, which is then used to generate electricity. A single liter of urine can produce up to six hours of power, which may not seem like much until you realize that a typical person excretes about two liters of urine daily.
3. Self-Replenishing Water Bottle
The development of renewable water resources is one of the most urgent challenges of the modern era. Water purification and treatment are major energy consumers—and this is without considering the estimated one billion people who live in areas where fresh water is scarce. NBD Nano may have found the answer: they’ve designed a self-refilling water bottle.
What initially seems like magic is actually quite straightforward. The bottle is equipped with water-attracting bumps surrounded by water-repellent valleys. These bumps cause moisture from the air to condense on the surface of the bottle, and the droplets are then funneled through the valleys and into the bottle itself.
The end result is that the bottle can fill itself simply by sitting in open air—and it can do so at a rate of up to three liters of water per hour.
2. Harnessing Energy from Train Vibrations
Energy is all around us, just waiting for the right technology to tap into it. Recognizing that the vibrations from a moving train produce a significant amount of potential energy, researchers at Stony Brook University created a device to capture this energy and convert it into electricity.
They assert that their device can generate up to 200 watts of DC power. If this additional electricity were used to power devices at train stations, it could save New York State $10 million annually. Considering the nearly 141,000 miles (227,000 km) of train tracks across the US, the energy savings could be substantial nationwide.
1. Wave-Powered Robot Travels 9,000 Miles
The Wave Glider, created by Liquid Robotics, is an autonomous marine vehicle that harnesses a unique power source: ocean waves. The patented system enables the small vessel to keep moving as long as there’s even the slightest wave motion on the surface—which, as it turns out, is virtually always the case.
Recently, the Wave Glider set a new world record for the longest distance traveled by an unmanned vehicle—covering over 9000 miles (14,500 km) in one year. During its journey, it endured violent ocean storms and was even attacked by sharks.
