On June 1, when Real Madrid triumphed over Borussia Dortmund to claim their record 15th UEFA Champions League title, another notable record was being set a few miles away from Wembley Stadium.
As a student at Loughborough University, United Kingdom, Kemball-Cook was keen to do his bit to fight climate change. He won a placement with a major European energy company to use renewable energy for street lighting. When a user steps on the tile, it depresses by about 0.2 inches per footstep. This movement is barely noticeable to those walking on it but is sufficient for the tile to generate electricity.
The stored energy can be kept in batteries for several weeks and used to power Wi-Fi networks, streetlights, or air quality monitoring systems through a proprietary smart charging unit.The UEFA Champions League Final is Europe’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, featuring the top soccer clubs in the region and culminating in a UEFA Soccer Festival in the host city. This year’s final took place at Wembley Stadium in London, where organizers aimed to highlight sustainability.
The UEFA Soccer Festival spans three days, and Pavegen aimed to generate six kilowatt-hours of energy throughout the event. However, by the end, only 0.5 kWh was produced from 225,000 steps. These energy tiles are featured in locations such as Yosemite National Park and near The White House in the US. In Europe, they can be found at Lithuania’s space research center and in several shopping malls across the continent.