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The Road Energy System has been built by the Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV, a Dutch civil engineering firm. This system uses asphalt to generate electricity for power.

The engineering firm collected solar energy from a 200-yard stretch of road and parking lot to help heat a 70-unit, four story apartment building in the northern village of Avenhorn.

An industrial park, totaling 160,000 square feet, in the nearby city of Hoorn is kept warm in the winter by storing heat in the summer from 36,000 square feet of pavement.

Not to mention, the sun's heat was collected on many cloudy Dutch days; they only experienced a few days of intense heat.

Scientists in this firm note that not every place is breezy enough for wind turbines or has enough water for hydroelectricity.

''But solar falls everywhere,'' says Patrick Mazza, of Climate Solutions, a consultancy group in Seattle, Wash.

The sun, a renewable source of energy, radiates to earth more watts in one hour than the world can use in one year. Luckily for scientists solar experimentation is becoming more realistic than it would have ten years ago.

The costs associated with the Road Energy System will double construction costs but the system is designed to provide longer life for roads and bridges, as well as, fewer ice-induced accidents.

For the system to work, roads will require a latticework of flexible pipes under the asphalt. These pipes will pump heated water into natural aquifers deep into the ground where it will maintain a temperature of about 68 degrees F. The water can be retrieved up to months later.

But the same system can pump cold water from a separate subterranean reservoir to cool buildings on hot days.

The water will not be able to keep itself hot enough on its own to heat buildings in the winter so it will be forced to go through an electricity-powered heat pump for an extra boost. The installation of this heat pump is costly, about twice that of a gas heater, but the new system will reduce electricity by approximately half of what was needed before.

''The prospect of relying on the sun for all our power demands is finally becoming realistic,'' says report in New Scientist.