It occurs to me that we could give them some of the three billion used Starbucks cups I just read about today and set them loose generating hydrogen.

This may also, coincidentally, help fix the hydrogen infrastructure question; that is, if we start to create a large number of cars running on alternative fuels (hydrogen, in the present case), how to we effectively transport this hydrogen to refueling stations? Solution: have a large termite colony on-site at all of these gas stations, ship them recycling with current and developing recycling management infrastructure, and let the stations produce their own hydrogen on the spot. :-)

There would be some difficulties with such a setup, however. Namely, liter of gaseous hydrogen isn’t very much for powering cars (but, if we had quite a number of termites all working at once…). Also, we’d have to figure out a way to convert it to a usable form on-site, too, which at present might be a bit costly. Furthermore, we’d have to keep them isolated to gas stations and not in the residences of nearby neighborhoods. How would home values and owners react to nearby colonies of termites being commissioned for local gas stations?

This is still a quite interesting–and novel–use of termites for the alternative energy scene, problems included.

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