Few people know more about the electrons they use to power their day-to-day life than Michael Knez. Often up before dawn when all else is silent, Knez says he can hear the hum coming from Australia’s Tallawarra Power Station, four kilometers away across Lake Illawarra from his house, which Knez helped build some 14 years ago. A massive combined-cycle gas-fired power plant, Tallawarra produces enough electricity to supply the equivalent of roughly 200,000 Australian homes with substantially lower carbon emissions than the coal-fired plant it replaced.