CNBC Business | Electric moves

Electric moves

All the energy generated on the dancefloor can now be turned into energy for the club itself

With their powerful speakers, strobe lighting and air-con, one might assume that nightclubs are not exactly the most carbon neutral places on the planet. Rotterdam’s Club Watt might just change your mind. Holding up to 1,400  people, the nightclub is a part consciousness-raising, part green-energy experiment by Sustainable Dance Club, a company formed last year by a bunch of Dutch ecological inventors, engineers and investors. While the toilets are fashionably rainwater-fed and bars low-waste bars, it is the 25m2 sustainable dance floor that really has environmentalists jumping for joy. Aryan Tieleman, one of the club’s owners, says the energy generated by dancing on the €250,000 surface – developed with TU Eindhoven and Daan Roosegaarde – is transformed into 10% of the club’s electricity. Other green innovations will reduce energy use by 50% and water use by 30% compared with the previous club in the building, he says. Sustainable Dance Club hopes to sell the dance floor technology to other clubs – part of it was packed off and demonstrated in New York last month – and it is offering green certification to those that reduce emissions 30%. The company says it is currently working to develop cheaper, more effective materials. Tieleman believes this will be music to the ears of people who own gyms and fitness centres.  