One of These New Tree-Shaped Wind Turbines Would Look Great in Your Yard

Regular trees are just so not green. 

Normal trees are nice and all, but what have they done for you lately, besides eat CO2 and spit out oxygen? Have they helped power your laptop? Probably not – they’re too enamored with the wonders of photosynthesis. Get over yourselves, trees.

In 2016, trees might finally be getting an upgrade. A French tech company named NewWind has unveiled plans to sell a new, aluminum tree, which, instead of leaves, has a series of wind turbines hanging on the branches. But you probably won’t be mistaking this for a tree. It’s 36-feet tall and gives off a soft whirring sound as turbines turn even the lightest gust into energy.

“The main advantage of our technology is that it works with a very small input of energy and turbulent energy,” Jerome Michaud-Lariviere, the founder of NewWind, told Reuters.

Check out its noiseless operation:

Ya gotta admit it looks pretty cool and futuristic. 

A prototype will be installed on Paris’s Champs-Elysee in March to show off how pleasing and quiet the new turbines will be, with the trees appearing on the market sometime in 2016, according to the company. The cost will be $37,000 per “tree,” but the inventors claim it’ll pay for itself in energy savings within two years. And if it doesn’t, chop it down!

Photos by New Wind