The First 'Living Cement' Is Here — What It Means For The Future Of Buildings

What if the walls around you weren't just holding up your house — but secretly powering it too? That's the idea behind "living cement," developed by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark. By embedding electroactive bacteria into cement (not to be confused with concrete), they've created the first building material designed to both carry weight and store energy. It's still at the proof-of-concept stage, but even now it hints at a big rethink of how buildings could function. According to lead researcher Qi Luo, "The result is a new kind of material that can both bear loads and store energy — and which is capable of regaining its performance when supplied with nutrients."

The secret is Shewanella oneidensis, a microbe that moves electrons outside its own cell. Once mixed into cement, it forms a connected system that acts like a supercapacitor, holding and releasing energy on demand. That turns ordinary cement from a static building block into an active material with two roles: structure and storage.

The potential is huge. When paired with solar panels or solar roof shingles, a home could store the energy in its walls during the day and release it at night, cutting the need for extra batteries. Bridges could generate enough power to keep monitoring devices running. And, unlike conventional batteries made with rare minerals like lithium or cobalt, this system relies on cheap, widely available materials and naturally occurring living bacteria.

Here's how it works in practice: The bacteria pass electrons into the cement, creating a charge-holding network. Tiny channels that are embedded in the material, deliver nutrients, such as vitamins, salts, and proteins. These help to keep the organisms alive or re-activate them if they go dormant. In testing, the material recovered up to 80% of its energy capacity and worked in freezing and high-heat conditions. Several blocks wired together even powered an LED, a small but striking proof-of-concept.

For now, it's experimental and still at the proof of concept stage. Living cement isn't ready for foundations or bridges just yet. Researchers still need to figure out how long the bacteria can survive and how to scale production. But compared with traditional batteries, which degrade over time and rely on expensive, mined materials, this approach could be cheaper and more sustainable, in the long run.

The potential is enormous. A single room built from this cement could store about 10 kWh, enough to run a standard server for a day. Beyond homes, larger structures might one day act as backup power systems or store renewable energy directly in their walls. The research is still early, but it points toward a future where cement doesn't just provide shelter; it helps keep the lights on, maybe even during power outages.