I got the impression, both from this article and the original (here: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/11/eabd9138) that the electricity wasn't generated by the fungus, but instead the increased compressibility of the wood after being rotted enhanced its pre-existing piezoelectric properties. The original article does mention "mitigation of climate change" as a possible application, by the way.
I heard that squeezing "possibly related to climate change" somewhere in academic work increases chances of getting grant money nowadays, could it be it's the only reason why this phrase is there in this case?
Oh dang, Yeah I think you’re right! Maybe I got to excited for the fungus part from my own bias, maybe I’ve been watching to much Star Trek haha :)
So it’s the resulting structure of the wood, not the mycelium itself. Thanks for setting me straight.
It’s a little unclear how, or what types of devices could be powered by this, but they would be very low power. The biggest is mitigation to climate change come from selecting wood as the primary building material, versus steel which produces a lot of greenhouse gas.
