BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM
Imagine getting on the treadmill and knowing that every stride you take burns calories and helps keep the lights on. At Brown University, this is exactly what is happening. The Nelson Fitness Center has transformed exercise into a green energy initiative, owing to some very clever cardio gadgets that convert sweat into power. Yes, you read that correctly: students are physically powering their own gym by running, rowing, and cycling their way to fitness.
Brown’s gym now houses a unique set of SportsArt cardio machines that harvest kinetic energy from workouts and feed it straight into the building’s power supply. “It’s like you’re a human power plant,” explains Elina Pipa, the Brown University student who spearheaded the idea. “When you hop on one of these machines, you’re not just doing something good for your body—you’re doing something great for the planet, too.”
The gym already has eight of these energy-generating machines, but they’re just getting started. By next month, 17 additional machines will have joined the fleet, increasing the total to 25. This means that students will have more opportunities to convert their daily workouts into a sustainable energy source for the school.
From the classroom to the real world
This entire notion began as a simple classroom assignment—talk about extra credit! During her sophomore year, Elina Pipa, originally from Athens, Greece, enrolled in a climate solutions course. The course required students to develop a business case for a real-world climate solution. While some may have imagined distant, hypothetical scenarios, Pipa chose to focus on something closer to home: Brown University’s own exercise center.
“I had this image of a hamster on a wheel generating energy, and I thought, ‘Why not us?'” Pipa explains. After looking around, she discovered SportsArt, a firm that manufactures gym equipment that converts human energy into power. It turns out that this idea wasn’t simply possible; it was already taking place at Ohio State University and Monkton Stadium in England.
Pipa’s project was more than just brainstorming; she went all in. She spoke with sports directors from other campuses that had introduced comparable equipment, surveyed Brown students about their gym habits, and ran the statistics to see how much energy these devices could truly create. The results were encouraging. Pipa determined that by replacing just half of the gym’s cardio machines with these energy-generating equivalents, the fitness center could offset roughly two percent of its electricity needs—which is significant given that the gym already had solar panels doing the same function.
“When you see that even your gym equipment can make a difference, it shifts your perspective,” Pipa says. “It makes you realize that everyday actions can have a real impact on the environment.”
Pumping up the power: Expanding the energy-generating gym
Pipa’s vision became a reality after months of research, presentations, and numerous gym trips. Her lecturer, Stephen Porder, assisted her in pitching the idea to Brown’s athletic department. The institution was so delighted that it announced a trial program with six SportsArt machines in the fall of 2023.
Students’ feedback was highly positive. The devices were not only simple to use, but they also provided rapid feedback on how much energy they were producing. “It’s pretty cool to see how many watts you’re producing while you’re running,” the student states. “It definitely makes me want to push a little harder.”
The pilot was so successful that Brown decided to extend the program. By the start of the fall 2024 semester, the gym will include 25 energy-generating devices. While the exact amount of energy produced is still being recorded, the expansion demonstrates the university’s confidence in the project’s potential.
This incident has transformed Pipa’s life. She now knows that making a difference does not have to wait until after graduation. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to have an impact,” she exclaims. “Sometimes, it’s about taking an existing idea and running with it—literally!”
As Brown University expands its energy-generating gym, it sends a strong message: sustainability can be a part of everyday life and does not have to be a chore. By converting workouts into watts, the institution demonstrates that caring for the environment is as simple as putting on your sneakers and heading to the gym.
