Pedestrians are using specially- designed pavements to generate electricity in a two-week energy-saving trial in the French city of Toulouse. The group of paving slabs installed in the city centre can generate 30 watts of electricity, enough to power overhead street lights.
"It is an experiment for now, but this system, unique in the world, allows us to anticipate a whole series of applications for the city," said the deputy mayor in charge of sustainable development, Alexandre Marciel.
The paving slabs contain micro-sensors which capture the energy created by people walk-ing on them, and store it in a battery.
This could enable the city to collect electricity during the day for use at night when there are fewer people on the streets.
The pavement was invented by Dutch firm Jaap Van der Braak.