Some of you might have seen the newly released film City of Ember, a science fiction adventure story that takes place in a civilization that had to go underground due to some worldwide disaster. In the story, the generator that powers the subterranean town has reached the end of its 200-year lifespan, and no one knows what to do.

I suppose films like this are symbolic of the fears that we all have: that some day all our energy will just plain run out. A South Korean designer named Sung Woo Park has come up with a way to save energy.

This concept, known as Energy Seed, is a street lamp that runs on discarded batteries. Just picture taking your batteries to the recycling plant, but you will be putting them into specially sized tubes in the Energy Seed. These batteries are then stacked upon each other, and the combined power of these batteries work together to power a street lamp.

It is precisely what we need to stretch out our energy resources. After all, I know a lot of batteries go to waste, but if they were all chained together, they would have just enough power to do some good. Of course, this raises the question of what to do with the batteries in the Energy Seed once they are totally worn out.

Well, the Energy Seed is still in concept stage, but if we ever do have a City of Ember situation, we will certainly need it.

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