Power Walking for Cleaner Energy: The Pavegen Story

Business for Good Podcast

Every time you take a step, you’re creating energy. Sadly, that energy isn’t captured and used to power your daily life. But what if it could be?

That’s exactly what Pavegen is doing. What started as a guy tinkering in his room to make tiles that generate electricity when depressed is now a multimillion dollar startup with flooring installations in more than 30 countries.

As you’ll hear in this interview with Pavegen CEO Laurence Kemball-Cook, after much trial and error, he invented a light-generating tile which he clandestinely installed in downtown London in the middle of the night to see what would happen. The video he posted online went viral, and the next thing he knew he had a half-million dollar purchase order from a major shopping mall company.

That set Laurence off to the races, sometimes quite literally with installations for runners, and now he’s overseeing a team of 40 seeking to mass-produce energy-creating tiles for sidewalks, roads, dancefloors, football fields, and more all around the world.

And unlike some other types of clean energy, this technology doesn’t depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing, but rather just people (or vehicles) passing over.

Pavegen’s now launched a crowdfunding campaign to fuel its future growth, as it works to create its vision for a more sustainable energy future, literally one step at a time.

Discussed in this episode

• Video promo for Pavegen’s crowdfunding campaign

• TechCrunch video on Pavegen’s technology

• Yahoo Finance on Pavegen

• Laurence recommends reading The Lean Startup

• Laurence also recommends the How I Built This episode with Ring founder Jamie Siminoff

• Laurence is enthused by waterless toilets, like those that Bill Gates is pioneering (more on his partnership with Samsung here)

More about Laurence Kemball-Cook

Laurence Kemball-Cook is the award-winning founder and CEO of Pavegen Systems, an innovative clean technology company. Pavegen is a flooring technology that instantly converts kinetic energy from footsteps into renewable off-grid energy.

This technology has been used across the world and installed in over 150 projects in more than 30 countries. Laurence has partnered with figures such as solar entrpreneur and artist Akon, football legend Pele and will.i.am to promote his clean-tech vision. He has also worked with some of the world’s largest companies including Shell, Adidas, Heathrow and Europe’s largest shopping centre, Westfield.