One of my foundational perspectives is that we live immersed in a simmering soup of gasses, liquids and particles. When I walk my pastures each day I have a strong sensation of being submerged, like a lead booted diver on the seabed, but less so. The simmering bit is important. It's hot, even when it's cold. The world sizzles with energy.

A big focus here at the IEEE’s IEDM conference has been on devices for energy harvesting—sometimes called energy scavenging. Essentially, they can produce their own electricity from ambient sources. This “free energy” comes from solar, vibration, pressure and temperature gradients, as well as human power . . .

The repurposing of motion energy for devices is hardly new—self-winding watches have been using human movement for years . . .

The real heady stuff came in the form of nanogenerators. Two types were discussed at the conference, and required putting on your physics thinking cap for full impact. The first was a DARPA-sponsored project for nanoscale thermoelectric energy harvesting. Basically the idea is to create a thin-film, solid-state heat pump that turns temperature variance directly into electricity—taking advantage of a phenomenon called the Seebeck effect. As with much of this research, the scientists behind it saw an application in implantable biomedical devices, but they also offered an innovative potential use as a layer on top of computer chips. As the chip heats up, it could produce enough power to run a fan on the heat sink that would cool it down. Since heat from computer chips is entirely the product of energy waste, the solution seemed particularly elegant.

This is small beer energy harvesting, not a replacement for base load power generation or anything, but I imagine a gradual change where more of our everyday devices and appliances become smaller, more efficient and in the end powered by ambient energy.

I find thermo-electric and piezoelectric systems especially interesting. I don't know if significant amounts of energy could be harvested that way, but when I walk along bathed in such energies I imagine the heat and pressures I withstand to be potentially useful. I want a nano-suit that harvests necessary power from the environment to keep me comfortable - cool when it's hot, warm when it's cold, high and dry. A warmed or cooled home would be less necessary if I had personal protection, and my days outdoors would be much better.