Professor Bernhard Witholt of Zurich's Institute of Biotechnology believes that humans will one day be able to source electricity produced by trees and plants from sugars, or directly from photosynthesis. It might even be possible to generate electricity from the carbohydrates contained in wood and fruit, using the same biotechnology as that used by South American electric eels to generate 600 volt stuns. All cells produce a small electrical potential across their membranes of the order of 100 millivolts or so. The electric eel has found a way to accumulate that into hundreds of volts. "I could do something analogous," he said.

This would permit the ultimate in self-sufficiency and local production: available to all; in small dispersed systems; built from a packet of seeds. One tree, apparently, could drive a fridge (ed.- the household's most thirsty consumer). A clump of trees could power an entire household.