While the city of Stockholm is burning bunnies to power its homes, the human cremation process could soon provide an alternative energy of its own. A UK crematorium is looking into a new technology to recapture energy from human cremation.
Hastings Borough Council in East Sussex has announced that it is investing in technology to reclaim some of the energy lost in the cremation process. Although the technology is still in its proving stages, the crematorium hopes to have new generators that will capture and reuse the excess heat created by the cremation process to heat and eventually power the facility.
The spokespeople say it's still several steps away from actually using human bodies as fuel; the energy will come from the machines themselves rather than the bodies. But given how much fuel crematoria consume, it seems plausible that bodies could someday help fuel their own cremation process.
Crematorium to use burning bodies to generate electricity [Telegraph via Xenophilia]