Missouri is rolling out a set of energy-generating photovoltaic pavers along a section of the iconic Route 66 highway in a sidewalk pilot project—the first on a public right of way—in the U.S. The street pavers were developed by Solar Roadways, a company created by inventors Scott and Julie Brusaw, which raised more than $2.2 million in crowdfunding in 2014 to bring their technology to market.

The Brusaws claim that replacing all of America’s roads and parking lots with their solar pavers would generate more than three times what the country consumed in electricity in 2009.

The Missouri Department of Transportation considered their own crowdfunding campaign to support their energy experiment; plans called for the hexagonal solar panels to be fully installed and operational by the end of this year.

Source: NBC

This article appears in the December 2016 issue of Natural Awakenings.