Two of the most pressing and discussed issues facing the world today include the global housing crisis, with more than 800 million people forced to live in slums, and our grotesque reliance on non-renewable energy sources, which has led to the depletion of Earth’s resources and has dramatically increased global warming. 3D printing technology has already made huge contributions to address both of these concerns individually, such as affordable 3D printed homes and efficient 3D printed wind turbines, however energy waste in manufacturing, buildings and transportation is fundamentally connected—a real breakthrough means solving them together rather than separately.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory unveiled its Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) project, a first-of-its-kind design that uses an integrated symbiotic energy system to share energy between a single-unit, 3D printed solar powered house and a 3D printed electric car. When scaled up to a full-size community, AMIE could support worldwide electricity needs, completely revolutionizing how we generate, use, and store clean energy.