In honor of the thousands of delegates in Paris this week at COP21 trying to save the planet, we thought we’d share interesting news from one innovator trying to do his part.
Admit it… Sitting there on a stationary bike or looking at all those people at the gym on ellipticals, you’ve thought to yourself, I bet you could power the whole building with the energy generated by all those little spinning wheels. Get fit and fight climate change at the same time? Hell, yes!
Well, someone else is actually doing it.
Manoj Bhargava, the inventor behind Five Hour Energy Drink (something else you’re probably familiar with if you’ve ever pulled an all-night coding session), has recently built a prototype of the Free Electric bike — a stationary bicycle that can power a home’s lights and basic appliances for an entire day after just one hour of pedaling.
Using stationary bikes for alternate uses is not new. Perhaps you’ve seen Maya Pedal, an NGO in Guatemala bringing pedal power to rural artisans, or even the Pedal Powered Snow Cone Camp at Burning Man, but Bhargava is one of the first to take the technology to the next level in an effort to fight to climate change.
Read more at National Geographic.