Roads and parking lots. They are everywhere in today’s busy, dog-eat-dog, modern world. They sit there all day, selfishly absorbing the sun’s rays, then squandering all that heat at night by simply releasing it into the night air. Welp, a Dutch company named Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV is now working on ways to take that solar energy and use it to heat homes and offices.

Ooms has already implemented this technology in several places around the Netherlands; solar energy collected from nearby roads and parking lots helps heat an industrial park of 160,000 square feet in Hoorn, a 70-unit apartment building in Avenhorn, and an air force base hangar.

This is a great idea; even on cloudy days, this system of getting heat from roads is effective. Let’s hope that America can build off of this Dutch technology and start using our numerous roads and parking lots to heat our buildings. Just think about how much of our land in cities is taken up by roads and parking lots. Imagine if we were using that captured solar energy to heat our buildings. We could cut our power usage in a huge way, while not sacrificing anything in the way of personal comfort.

A good article about getting energy from asphalt can be found right about here. Thanks to my pop for letting me know about this.