It may not exactly be Avatar, but, at the same time, there is no need to travel to Pandora in the Alpha Centauri star system to get a glimpse at how we may be living in the future.

Just come to Kokkini Hani, cross under the new National Road, and, only a few metres past the Kamari Hotel, is a true futuristic house…hopefully, one of the immediate future.

No, it is no domed structure, and it is not made of unobtanium. In fact, it looks like many other Cretan houses, until you zero in on the two towering windmills in its backyard.

"I bought the smaller one, but the bigger one I built myself, from scratch," said Mihalis Kalogerakis, as we stood on the roof of the three-story dwelling to get a close-up look at the twirling blades. Then, pointing to the elaborate set up of his solar energy panels next to us, he added: "I made those, too. Together with the windmills I get 25kwt of power. I haven't paid an electric bill since I built this house 15 years ago."  

The only problem that confronted Kokkini Hani's own resident inventor was what to do with all that extra power, which was more than the household needed.

"It was a question of where to store the unused energy," Mihalis said. "But I found the solution, which is to convert it to fuel, alcohol."

The inventor explained that he designed and constructed, electronics and all, his own inverter which takes the current from the battery and converts it to current suitable to power a house, AC current.

"The wind and solar energy store it in the battery," he said. "From the battery the inverter takes the current and renders it suitable for home. Puts it up to 220.

"These are regulators regulating wind and solar energy," he explained, pointing at various components of the machine. "And this is a battery charger.  I turn whatever energy I can't use to fuel."

He showed us another machine near the inverter. "This is where I make the fuel. Just take some sugar, yeast and water and in 15 days we have pure alcohol. And we can operate our motor vehicles with clean energy."

To demonstrate, he wheeled out a motor bike, poured alcohol into the gas tank, and started it up.

"See, absolutely clean fuel," he said, wiping his finger inside the exhaust system, and then held it up for inspection. "Not a trace of carbon, and I've ridden it for thousands of kilometres. With four litres I can go 200 kilometres." 

In addition to the bike, Mihalis also invented a car, built from scratch, which runs on alcohol, which started right up when he unveiled it to us. "I drove it to Iraklion once, but the police gave me a warning and said don’t do it again…so I didn’t. But it's capable of running all over Crete."

Mihalis, who is an electronics engineer by profession, maintains that converting sugar to alcohol is the answer to the energy crisis, and that Greece has the perfect weather for growing sugar cane. And, to prove his point he showed us a single sugar plant just taking root in his front yard.

"I got this plant from Madagascar," he said. "No one grows them in Greece."From 20 square metres of sugarcane in my front yard I can obtain one tonne of clean fuel. Can you imagine what could be possible if some of our farm lands were used for growing sugar?"

Mihalis tried to interest the government in this new clean energy source, and prior to last year's election he sent a letter to Yiorgos Papandreou.

In the letter, he outlined his inventions and findings for producing inexpensive fuel while keeping up with ecology and asked the help of the "next prime minister of Greece" to make this possible for the rest of the country.

"I never received an answer," he said. "I sent it to him even before the elections because he spoke about green power, but it's only been green taxes."

Mihalis, 48, was born in Thessaloniki, but his father is from Kastelli and his mom is from Germany, and they moved back to Crete when he was seven. Twenty-five years ago he married the lovely Krystalia Syntihaki of Elia and they have a son, John, 24.

When asked what other projects were being considered, Mihalis told of his new experiment to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen and see if hydrogen is economical in engines.

"Hydrogen is a good fuel but it might take more power to break down the water and extract the hydrogen than the power actually obtained from hydrogen," he said. "That's what I hope to find out."

Meanwhile, he'll also continue with his clean energy production.

"If I, as a single person, was able to do this in my private home and garden in Kokkini Hani, then Greece, as a country, could really make a difference."