Voltree rips clean coal to shreds, makes electricity from trees

What grows around us everywhere, draws power from a virtually limitless energy source and is green by nature? Trees. Voltree, a new startup based in the U.S., noticed that too and is doing something about it in a potentially big way. Right now the company is working to create a mesh network of wireless sensors that detect forest fires and draw power from a host tree. That makes power from clean coal seem awfully dirty.

Though Voltree is starting with its sensor array, drawing power from trees opens up a whole new approach to power generation applying some green principles. The company’s Early Wildfire Alert Network (EWAN) would track humidity and temperature in remote forested locations, according to Voltree.

The idea for such a monitoring system isn’t new, but previously it was difficult to justify the expense of changing batteries for thousands of sensors on a regular basis (the Energizer bunny was not available for comment). The amount of waste created in a scenario like that is mind boggling too, as old batteries would regularly be trashed and likely end up in our landfills.

Of course, the impact of throwing away batteries sounds less drastic when compared to the effects of mining coal. With surface coal mining there are a variety of specific side effects according to Wikipedia, it:

. . . completely eliminates existing vegetation, destroys the genetic soil profile, displaces or destroys wildlife and habitat, degrades air quality, alters current land uses, and to some extent permanently changes the general topography of the area mined. This often results in a scarred landscape with no scenic value, though rehabilitation can mitigate some of these concerns.

Other types of mining have varying effects, and that’s just the beginning of the coal-to-energy lifecycle. Not only does it scar the surface of the Earth, it also generates volumes of carbon dioxide which permeates the atmosphere.

It makes power generated by trees seem like a dream. Realistically, it would take a whole lot of plants to meet our current power needs, though some sort of superplant that generates twenty times the output is never out of the question.

Interestingly, Voltree also notes that the sensors would harvest metabolic energy from trees in a parasitic relationship that promises not to “significantly [harm] it”. Field tests are certainly in order, otherwise we could end up with crops of trees deadened by voracious mechanical parasites.

Still, if tests go well and and Voltree were to adapt the technology for other use, maybe one day we could stop by the closest tree to charge up our mobile phones and laptops.