Solarpunk

At Panchsheel Inter College in Uttar Pradesh, students now study inside a new school wing built not from concrete or traditional brick, but from sugarcane. The innovation was born at the University of East London (UEL) and its creators argue it could reshape how buildings are made and how the planet pays for it.

Sugarcrete combines the fibrous residues of sugarcane, called bagasse, with sand and mineral binders to produce lightweight, interlocking blocks. Lab tests show that Sugarcrete has strong fire resistance, acoustic dampening, and thermal insulation properties. It’s been tested to industrial standards and passed with flying colors. In terms of climate impact, the material is a standout. It’s six times less carbon-intensive than standard bricks, and twenty times less than concrete, by some estimates.

Yet the real excitement doesn’t only come from what Sugarcrete is, but how it’s made and used. It is purposely ‘open access’ in order to establish partnerships to produce new bio-waste-based construction materials where sugarcane is grown. Unlike conventional building materials locked behind patents, Sugarcrete can be made by anyone with the right ingredients and basic manufacturing tools. That choice decentralizes construction innovation, allowing small-scale producers — especially in the Global South — to lead.

I commissioned Seth Rutledge to make concept art for a Solarpunk neighbourhood and I think it is just right. Walkable and bikable streets. Solarpanels on the roof and places you can just sit and chill.

Feel free to use the image, if you need stock footage for presentations and such. reference the original artist of course.

(I also have a higher resolution file I can provide)

I joined Mastodon over on mastodon.social, which has served me well. But I’d like to migrate to another instance that is more tailored to my interests. Are there any particular instances that run on clean energy and are focused more around ecology and sustainability?

I don't know if this is the right community to post this video, but the community they are (building) seems very solarpunk to me!

I'm finding it harder and harder to tell whether an image has been generated or not (the main giveaways are disappearing). This is probably going to become a big problem in like half a year's time. Does anyone know of any proof of legitimacy projects that are gaining traction? I can imagine news orgs being the first to be hit by this problem. Are they working on anything?

Time and place

19th-26th of August 2025, first two-three days are buildup.

Podebłocie 100km south from Warsaw, Poland.

what is solpunk?

Solpunk is a gathering for anyone interested in creating anything solarpunk with others!

What does that actually mean? Is it an un-conference? Is it a festival? Is it just some punks in a field? A wise guess is that people here are interested in many of the following things:

Lowtech and community tech, energy reduction and renewables, sharing resources, temporary nomadic community, dancing, alternative economy, creating a just future, hackathons, dumpster diving, opensource hardware, software and production, means of care and solidarity, community

Source

A Solarpunk Compass

https://corvodsx.any.org/a-solarpunk-compass

#blog #en #solarpunk #ecology

@solarpunk

The current model for funding advancements in tech in the 21st century is: quantitative easing-doped venture capital hungry for investments -> startup uses initial money to make actual tech advancement (this is the good bit) -> hypes up idea, does IPO -> ideally market monopolization and vendor lock-in -> which allows them to enshittify and extract arbitrary rent from both the supplier and consumer side of their user base and return money to the investors, for ever.

The fact that this funding model applies to tech in general is demonstrated by the broad range of fields where it has been used:

• for software, things like Figma or Medium
• for hardware, things like the Juicero (a great example of how venture capital values trendiness (juicero was wifi-connected, required an app, god forbid if AI existed at the time) over real-world utility (the juice capsules could be opened by hand))
• for biotech, things like GMO golden rice, where Monsanto disabled propagation so that farmers would have to come back to them for seeds (that's not exactly what happened, but I'm trying to make a point).

The obvious alternative to this is touted to be open source, ie. people making things for free and sharing it with others.

Unfortunately, the amount of things you can achieve for free, possibly relying on donations, is very limited. If you want to become a serious business, you need a serious funding model. I am convinced that the choice between open source and the Sillicon Valey model is a false dichotomy, and other ways of funding advancements in tech must exist (after all, the Sillicon Valey model has not always been the modus operandi).

Are there any hybrid business models for funding tech developments, that eg. even allow the developed tech to be open source? Has any research been done into the design of novell funding models?

I started a local vibecoders group because I think it has the potential to help my community.

(What is vibecoding? It's a new word, coined last month. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding)

Why might it be part of a solarpunk future? I often see and am inspired by solarpunk art that depicts relationships and family happiness set inside a beautiful blend of natural and technological wonder. A mom working on her hydroponic garden as the kids play. Friends chatting as they look at a green cityscape.

All of these visions have what I would call a 3-way harmony--harmony between humankind and itself, between humankind and nature, and between nature and technology.

But how is this harmony achieved? Do the "non-techies" live inside a hellscape of technology that other people have created? No! At least, I sure don't believe in that vision. We need to be in control of our technology, able to craft it, change it, adjust it to our circumstances. Like gardening, but with technology.

I think vibecoding is a whisper of a beginning in this direction.

Right now, the capital requirements to build software are extremely high--imagine what Meta paid to have Instagram developed, for instance. It's probably in the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. It's likely that only corporations can afford to build this type of software--local communities are priced out.

But imagine if everyone could (vibe)code, at least to some degree. What if you could build just the habit-tracking app you need, in under an hour? What if you didn't need to be an Open Source software wizard to mold an existing app into the app you actually want?

Having AI help us build software drops the capital requirements of software development from millions of dollars to thousands, maybe even hundreds. It's possible (for me, at least) to imagine a future of participative software development--where the digital rules of our lives are our own, fashioned individually and collectively. Not necessarily by tech wizards and esoteric capitalists, but by all of us.

Vibecoding isn't quite there yet--we aren't quite to the Star Trek computer just yet. I don't want to oversell it and promise the moon. But I think we're at the beginning of a shift, and I look forward to exploring it.

P.S. If you want to try vibecoding out, I recommend v0 among all the tools I've played with. It has the most accurate results with the least pain and frustration for now. Hopefully we'll see lots of alternatives and especially open source options crop up soon.

Do you know the "Future Histories" podcast? It aims to expand our concept of the future by discussing a broad range of themes like alternatives to capitalism, degrowth, commons, cybernetics and much more. In every episode the host Jan Groos talks to interesting guests, who are activists, scholars or experts on their fields. I linked one of the recent episodes but I would recommend to check them all out. Sadly many episode are in german, but you can find the English episodes by searching for "Future Histories International".