We need to be embracing solar energy – so says Raphael Heffron from the University of Dundee:
“We’ve been fed the assumption that oil, coal, and gas give us energy security for many years, but the Ukraine crisis shows us that’s not the case… Why have we stuck with the energy sources people were using hundreds of years ago? In any other sector, it would be unthinkable to use hundred-year-old technology.”
He’s interviewed as part of a bigger piece which goes beyond the technology – and looks to the vision:
Solarpunk: Why 2023 Must Be the Year of the Sun
The ongoing global energy crisis demands a shift away from fossil fuels. The Frontline looks back at the history of the solar industry—and where it needs to head next to succeed in 2023.
As I write, I imagine paneled waves of silver tracing their way over distant farmland hills, draping themselves over the roofs of tower blocks and community centers. I can’t take credit for this image: it’s the product of hours spent lost online, exploring solarpunk visions of a world where fossil fuels stay in the ground.
The solarpunk movement, as defined by the Solarpunk Anarchist blog in 2016, “attempts to negate the dominant idea [that] grips popular consciousness: that the future must be grim.” Born from a humble 2008 blog post, solarpunk is an alternate reality that’s simultaneously ancient and futuristic, its hypothetical inhabitants (us) connected to something greater and more eternal than ourselves in a way that feels tantalizingly within reach. In a 2019 paper, Dr. Rhys Williams, a lecturer in energy and environmental humanities at the University of Glasgow who has written about solarpunk, called this solar power’s “just over the horizon” quality: its capacity to invoke dreams of an eco-centered utopia that somehow feels forever around the corner…
Perhaps as a result of my days as a denizen of Tumblr, where solarpunk ideology blossomed in the 2010s, these limitations take me straight back to the drawing board to design the kind of future that works for all of us. Built on a foundation of climate optimism, inclusivity, and democracy, solarpunk asks us to actively imagine a future where we save the planet in tandem with the human and non-human communities sharing our soils…
There are three elements in the growing body of solarpunk literature that have come to characterize the genre: light, abundance, and transparency. If we can weave these into the roots of solar power generation, we can brighten the world into a sunnier place.