Why the World's Best Visitor Destinations Are Generating Their Own Energy

27 March 2026

There’s a question more destinations are starting to ask, not just “how do we reduce our energy consumption?” but something far more interesting: what if the people walking through our spaces could generate the energy themselves?

It’s not a hypothetical. Across national parks, airports, museums, markets and sports venues, some of the world’s most visited destinations have already begun turning footfall into something far more valuable with Pavegen.

The truth is, any destination serious about sustainability could put solar panels on the roof. Many of them already have. But the destinations featured in this blog made a different choice. Not instead of solar, but because they understood something that traditional energy infrastructure can't deliver no matter how many panels you stack on a rooftop.

People don’t connect with a solar panel. They don’t feel it, interact with it, or leave with a story or memory of it. Solar works quietly and invisibly, and in a world where visitor experience defines the memory of a place, invisible sustainability is a missed opportunity.

Pavegen changes the narrative. It puts visitors at the centre of the energy story. Their footsteps generate the power. Their movement lights the space. They don’t just visit they participate. And participation, as every destination manager knows, is what turns a visit into a memory.

Here’s what that looks like across five of the world's most visited destination categories.

1. Parks

Yosemite National Park is one of the most visited natural landscapes on earth, attracting millions of visitors every year. It is also, by its very nature, a place that demands environmental responsibility from everyone who enters it.

Pavegen's installation at Yosemite's visitor centre brought those two ideas together in a way that visitors could feel. Every footstep across the kinetic floor generated real, measurable energy, and to date, the installation has exceeded 20 million joules of energy generated from footsteps alone, displayed in real-time on a screen for visitors to see. That's equivalent to around 2,000 hours of talk time on a standard smartphone.

More importantly, it gave visitors a way to participate in the park's sustainability mission rather than simply observe it. In a natural environment where the instinct is to leave no trace, Pavegen offers something different: leave energy behind.

On the other side of the world, the Sports Boulevard Foundation in Riyadh - a $25 billion green spine stretching across the Saudi capital - took a similar approach. Pavegen installed kinetic walkways along an elevated pedestrian path, converting the footsteps of walkers, cyclists and families into off-grid electricity powering LED lighting in the handrails in real time. Intentionally screen-free, the installation was designed to let the physical experience speak for itself: move through the city, and the city responds.

2. Airports

Airports are among the highest-footfall environments on the planet. They are also environments where passengers have time, curiosity and often a genuine appetite for something worth engaging with between flights.

Abu Dhabi International Airport understood that. In partnership with Pavegen and Masdar City, the airport installed a 16-square-metre kinetic walkway in a high-footfall terminal, the first installation of its kind in a commercial airport in the Middle East. Thousands of travellers pass through it every day, with their footsteps converted into off-grid electricity powering LED lighting along the walkway in real time. Live data screens show passengers exactly how much energy they are generating as they walk, turning the experience into something memorable long after the flight lands.

The result: over two million passengers a year now interact with the installation. Not as passive observers of someone else's sustainability commitment, but as active participants in it.

3. Museums and Education Centres

The Cēsis Space Education Centre in Latvia set out to do something ambitious: create a museum where young people didn't just learn about science and technology, but experienced it firsthand. Pavegen's kinetic floor - the largest in Europe - became the centrepiece of that ambition.

As students and visitors walk through the centre, they generate energy with every step, connecting the abstract principles of renewable power to something visceral and immediate. It echoes a pattern we explored in a previous blog, The Micro-City Effect: when young people discover that their movement can create impact, that their steps can power, plant, or shape something real, participation becomes normal and sustainability becomes personal. Miks Denis, Head of the Cēsis Space Education Centre, put it simply: "In the Space Education Centre, every step matters. We needed to have bold ideas, for example how we can make electricity using our human resources." For a generation being asked to care about the energy transition, that kind of tangible interaction is worth more than any exhibit. It lays the foundations for the human‑centric environments they’ll expect everywhere else.

The BMW Museum brought a different dimension to the challenge creating an experience that connected the brand's heritage of precision engineering to a forward-looking conversation about sustainable mobility. Pavegen's installation gave visitors a way to engage with that conversation through movement rather than information alone.

4. Markets

Old Spitalfields Market in London has been a gathering place for over three centuries. Today it attracts 180,000 visitors every week; shoppers, city workers, tourists and locals passing through a space that has always been about community as much as commerce.

During a summer heatwave, Pavegen brought its kinetic technology to the market in partnership with sustainable water brand Nobl, who handed out cold water to visitors as they interacted with the installation. Every 200 footsteps planted a tree in partnership with reforestation company Evertreen, turning a spontaneous trip to the market into a unique moment with real environmental meaning attached to it.

The numbers speak for themselves: over 250,000 people interacted with the space in just three weeks, generating over one million joules of energy and helping plant 2,000 trees. 

5. Stadiums

Few environments concentrate human energy quite like a sports stadium. The Minnesota Vikings understood that when they partnered with Pavegen at the Twin Cities Orthopedics Performance Center - connecting the Training HAUS and TCO Stadium within the Vikings Plaza.

Fans visiting the Vikings' training camp in Eagan, Minnesota, could take on two immersive challenges: the 40-Yard Dash, where they raced against their favourite Vikings players' times while Pavegen tiles captured their kinetic energy in real time, and Famous Game Plays, where fans could recreate legendary Vikings moments through kinetic floor interactions.

The installation won a 2024 Sports Technology Award for Best Fan Engagement - recognition that the most powerful stadium experiences are the ones that make fans feel like part of something rather than spectators of it. Brett Taber, Vice President of Social Impact for the Minnesota Vikings, said: "STEM education is a critical portion of the Minnesota Vikings' mission to utilise our platform for impact to give back to our community."

The Opportunity Ahead

What connects Yosemite to Abu Dhabi, Old Spitalfields Market to Riyadh, a space education centre in Latvia to an NFL training facility in Minnesota? The same idea, applied across radically different contexts.

The most visited destinations in the world are also some of the most energy-intensive. They are places where people are already gathering, already moving, already engaged. The question is simply whether that movement disappears into the floor - or gets put to work.

Visitor centres, parks, airports, museums, markets and stadiums are not usually thought of as energy infrastructure. But with the right technology underfoot, every one of them can become exactly that. The energy is already there. It arrives with every visitor, every day.

The only question is whether you're ready to harness it. Get in touch today if you are. We'll do the rest. 

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For more information about how Pavegen kinetic technology is helping pave the wave for a more sustainable future, contact press@pavegen.com.

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About Pavegen

Pavegen is a purpose-driven technology business that helps power change and generates positive outcomes for people and planet. Laying underfoot inside buildings, public spaces and at events, Pavegen Kinetic Paving harnesses the power of people’s footsteps, creating not only a small amount of energy – but also imaginative, interactive experiences and data, to help educate, engage and enable meaningful actions around sustainability and Net Zero intent. Pavegen calls this Citizen Impact; powered by Pavegen.

Pavegen helps power Kinetic Street Furniture applications such as USB charging, LED lights, and Green Wall irrigation systems, whilst data from the system can be used for public educational purposes on digital display screens. Kinetic Brand Experiences at live events, expos, festivals and public spaces produce data to provide gamified experiences that help brands engage meaningfully with consumers.

The company was founded in 2009 by Laurence Kemball-Cook who invented the Kinetic Paving technology that can now be seen in over 37 countries around the world.