Beyond Energy Efficiency: The Emerging Era of Smart Bioenergy

Today’s energy-efficient houses operate according to the principles underpinning national energy grids based on the delivery of electricity at 230 V into our homes. Such huge demand has been met to date using fossil fuels and increasingly, clean, renewable energy sources like solar and wind. However, these new, fossil fuel-free energy industries do not address smarter energy consumption via more locally situated ways, which is typical of organisms, but rather maintain the consumptive paradigm that pumps huge amounts of power into our homes—much of which is stepped down by transformers so that it can be safely used in domestic appliances. This essay discusses the emerging provision of bioenergy within our homes, which is produced by the metabolism of organic waste by microbes and, as such, operate within the limits of their own energy reserves while processing organic matter into safe biological forms, e.g. compost. Tailoring the amount of energy they use according to their needs, these low-power systems operate in a much smarter way than industrialised, mechanical systems. Starting with the optimisation of the microbial fuel cell (MFC), a “living” battery system powered by microbes, this paper provides principles for the development of domestic systems that are powered by their own waste. Exemplifying an organic approach to net zero (and beyond) in the building industry, the contributions of the projects Living Architecture and ALICE (funded by the Future Emerging Technologies EU H2020 programme) to this possibility are outlined. In keeping with the drive to develop low power computing, and smarter, new materials-based technologies, applications of these hybrid microbial-artificial intelligences can also positively link human consumption with environmental health via bioremediation and are an important ecological step towards regenerative building practices, cities, and habitats.