Biomimicry in energy means borrowing designs from animals and plants to make power generation and buildings work better. The best examples are real but modest: bumps copied from humpback whale flippers improve airflow over a blade, and a famous office block in Zimbabwe keeps cool with ideas loosely taken from termite mounds. Most gains measured in tests run from single digits to tens of per cent, and many of the headline figures come from companies or labs rather than independent field data.
Some of the best-loved biomimicry stories also rest on claims repeated from one article to the next. Below we look at what has been built, what has only been tested, and where the evidence is thinner than the legend.
How it works
The method is simple to describe. Researchers study how a living thing deals with a physical problem, such as drag, noise, heat or light, work out the principle behind it, and apply that principle to a machine or building. It is less about making things look natural and more about copying the mechanics.
In energy, that usually means fluid dynamics (how air or water flows over a surface), heat management or the way surfaces trap light. Biomimicry rarely creates a new energy source. Instead it tweaks existing ones: a turbine blade that stalls later, a building that needs less air conditioning, a solar cell that absorbs a little more light.
Real-world examples
Whale flippers and turbine blades
Humpback whales have bumps, called tubercles, along the leading edge of their flippers. In 2004, Miklosovic, Murray, Howle and Fish tested a quarter-scale model flipper in a wind tunnel and reported in Physics of Fluids that the tubercles delayed stall by about 40% (measured as the angle at which lift collapses), while increasing lift and reducing drag.
The Canadian company WhalePower, founded by Stephen Dewar with biologist Frank Fish, licensed tubercle designs. From 2007 it tested blades on a single 25 kW turbine at the Wind Energy Institute of Canada and reported a 20% increase in annual energy production. That figure is the company’s own and was not independently confirmed. Press reports in 2008 expected tubercle blades to go on sale that year, but we found no commercial launch of a tubercle wind-turbine blade.
Where the idea did reach the market was ceiling fans. Envira-North sold large Altra-Air ceiling fans, 8 to 24 feet across, under a WhalePower licence, and the maker claimed 25% better aerodynamic efficiency. Dewar, Philip Watts and Fish were finalists for the European Patent Office’s European Inventor Award in 2018.
Termite mounds and the Eastgate Centre
The Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, designed by architect Mick Pearce and dating from 1991 to 1996, is the classic example of a building inspired by biology. Pearce’s practice describes it as a “termite-inspired passively cooled mixed-use city centre”.
In practice the building stays cool through thermal mass, heavy materials that soak up heat during the day, and night-time flushing, in which fans and chimney-like stacks draw cool night air through the structure. It does not reproduce the airflow inside a termite mound, and that matters, because the science of mounds has moved on. In 2010 the Harvard Gazette reported J. Scott Turner’s work showing that mounds behave “more as lungs than as simple chimneys”, with irregular, wind-driven airflow. A 2017 study by King, Ocko and Mahadevan found that mounds use daily temperature swings to drive ventilation. The tidy “termite chimney” story that made Eastgate famous was a simplification.
The building’s energy savings are also often overstated. It is widely said to use under 10% of the energy of a comparable building, though some versions apply that only to ventilation, and the claim appears in secondary sources such as travel guides. A more cautious figure, reported by Engineering News in 2014, is that Eastgate uses 35% less energy than comparable conventional buildings in Harare. That is still a useful saving, but it is a long way from 90%.
Kingfisher-beak bullet train
In Japan, Eiji Nakatsu, a JR West engineer and birdwatcher, shaped the nose of the 500 series Shinkansen in the 1990s after a kingfisher’s beak, to reduce the boom the train made as it left tunnels. The design story is well told; the percentages often attached to it for speed and electricity savings come from a travel-company blog rather than JR West, so we leave them out.
Fish-school wind farms
In May 2010 Caltech’s John Dabiri proposed placing vertical-axis wind turbines in staggered patterns, like a school of fish, so that each turbine benefits from the wake of its neighbours. Caltech said student models projected output per area of land “several times” that of conventional wind farms, and Dabiri suggested more than ten times. These were projections from a test site, FLOWE, north of Los Angeles. We found no commercial wind farm built on the fish-school principle.
Butterfly-wing solar cells
In 2017 researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany copied the disordered nanoholes in the wings of the common rose butterfly in a thin amorphous-silicon light absorber. Light absorption rose by 90% when light hit straight on and by up to 200% at steep angles. KIT itself called 200% a theoretical upper bound and said the efficiency of a whole solar module would not rise by the same factor. This remains a lab result, not a product.
Albatross-wing turbine blades
In May 2024 the University of Groningen described its “Albatrozz” project, which takes inspiration from albatross wings for turbine blades designed to work at lower wind speeds. It is still at the research stage.
Artificial photosynthesis, which copies the way plants turn sunlight into stored chemical energy, is also biomimicry; we cover it separately in artificial photosynthesis: making fuel from sunlight.
What the numbers say
| Example | Figure | Who says so | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whale-flipper tubercles (model) | Stall delayed by about 40% | Miklosovic et al., 2004 | Wind-tunnel test |
| WhalePower turbine blades | 20% more annual energy | The company (25 kW test, from 2007) | No product found |
| Altra-Air ceiling fans | 25% better aerodynamic efficiency | The maker | Sold commercially |
| Eastgate Centre | 35% less energy than comparable buildings | Engineering News, 2014 | Built, 1996 |
| Butterfly-wing absorber | Up to 200% more light absorbed at steep angles | KIT, 2017 | Lab only |
| Project WHOWL (UK) | Aims for 5% more output, 6–10 dB less noise | Northumbria University, 2026 | Targets, starting 2026 |
The pattern is consistent: real but modest improvements, often measured by the people selling or developing the idea. The biggest-sounding numbers (200% absorption, ten times the output per hectare) are lab ceilings or projections.
Limitations
Nature is a starting point, not a blueprint. The termite story shows how a simplified version of the biology can become accepted wisdom. Eastgate works, but because of sound passive-cooling engineering rather than a faithful copy of a mound.
Promising tests do not guarantee products. Whale-flipper bumps have been proven in wind tunnels and on ceiling fans, yet more than 15 years after the first turbine tests we found no tubercle wind-turbine blade on sale.
Lab gains shrink in the real world. Better light absorption in a thin layer of silicon does not translate one-for-one into more electricity from a whole panel, as KIT itself pointed out.
Gains add up slowly. A few per cent more output or a few decibels less noise can matter a great deal to a wind farm’s economics and planning prospects, but biomimicry is a way of refining technologies, not replacing them. Claims that solar panels will one day “self-repair like leaves” have no evidence behind them.
The UK angle
Britain is now one of the more active places for biomimicry in wind power, which matters in a country that leans so heavily on wind energy.
Project WHOWL, led by Northumbria University, combines whale-flipper tubercles on the leading edge of turbine blades with serrated trailing edges inspired by the silent flight of barn owls. The project is worth about £500,000, including around £400,000 from EPSRC (part of UKRI), and involves the University of Leeds. It runs for 24 months from October 2026, with partners including ORE Catapult, WhalePower and West Chester University, Frank Fish’s institution. The lead is Dr Xiang (Shaun) Shen. Its targets are 5% more energy output and 6–10 dB less noise; these are goals, and results will not be known for some time.
Brunel University London, working with turbine maker Vestas, has advertised PhD studentships on owl-inspired quieter blades, and the University of Southampton published a review of bio-inspired wind and tidal turbine research in September 2025. On the termite side, Rupert Soar of Nottingham Trent University has worked with J. Scott Turner on how air actually moves through mounds.
You can see how much of Britain’s electricity comes from wind at any moment on our live GB electricity mix page.
Frequently asked questions
What is biomimicry in energy?
It is the practice of copying designs and strategies from living things to improve how energy is generated or used. Examples include whale-flipper bumps on fan and turbine blades and passive cooling ideas taken from termite mounds.
What are some examples of biomimicry?
In energy, the best-known are tubercle ceiling fans based on humpback whale flippers, the Eastgate Centre in Harare, the kingfisher-shaped nose of Japan’s 500 series Shinkansen and butterfly-wing light absorbers for solar cells. Outside energy, Velcro, modelled on burrs, is the classic everyday example.
Are whale-fin wind turbine blades commercially available?
We found none. WhalePower tested tubercle blades on a 25 kW turbine from 2007 and claimed 20% more annual energy, but the design reached the market in ceiling fans, not turbines. The UK’s Project WHOWL is now testing the idea again.
How much energy does the Eastgate Centre save?
The often-quoted claim that it uses under 10% of a normal building’s energy comes from secondary sources. A more cautious figure, reported in 2014, is 35% less energy than comparable conventional buildings in Harare.
Do butterfly-wing solar panels work?
Only in the lab. KIT found in 2017 that butterfly-inspired nanoholes raised light absorption in a thin silicon layer by 90% head-on and up to 200% at steep angles, but said whole-module efficiency would not rise by the same amount.
What is Project WHOWL?
A two-year UK research project led by Northumbria University, starting in October 2026, that combines whale-flipper tubercles and owl-inspired serrated edges on wind turbine blades. It aims for 5% more output and 6–10 dB less noise.