Climate change is a profound challenge to the livelihoods of many people in African countries who have contributed so little to its cause. More frequent extreme weather events (floods, heatwaves and droughts) are making hunger, insecurity and displacement much worse. The continent holds an estimated 30% of the minerals that are essential for the future transition away from fossil fuels. However, Africa mostly exports these raw, leaving companies in other countries to reap the rewards of manufacturing low-carbon technologies and digital infrastructure. Sustainable development economists Michael Adetayo Olabisi and Howard Stein propose a new African “green bank” as a solution.

Let’s look for a moment at Cuba, which seems like it might well be next on the Trump hit list. The president said yesterday that he was looking for a “friendly takeover” of the island nation, and it’s clear that the tool he’s using is energy: after cutting off Venezuelan supplies, he’s also pressured Mexico to stop sending crude to Havana. As a result, he explained, “They have no money. They have no anything right now.”

As it happens, I went to Cuba to do some reporting the last time the country was in such a fix, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it Havana’s economic lifeline. In those days the country’s biggest problem was food, and it survived in part with a fairly remarkable turn towards urban agriculture. I was endlessly impressed with the Cubans I met who were learning how to grow the food their neighbors needed, even as I was depressed by the police state they were inhabiting.

Now the overwhelming problem is energy, and it’s here that something else quite profound has been happening: an almost unbelievable surge in the production of solar power.

One of the most popular solarpunk images is taking off in reality. The first recorded mention of solarpunk was in this 2008 blog. The author was inspired by the conceptual image of a cargo ship being pulled by a huge modern kite.

Following on from that the Jessica Woulfe’s artwork depicting blimp turbines (pictured above) won the Atomhawk solarpunk art competition in 2019. Since then Airborne Wind Energy Systems or AWES (love this acronym!) have become some of the most popular solarpunk imagery.

Many have thought this was just a protopian dream but as Matt Ferell explored in this recent video, AWES are getting much closer to reality. As Matt explains, a flying turbine has been successfully deployed by the company Kitepower in Ireland, poweringing the local town of Bangor.

A solarpunk retrofitted building is so epic it has ended up in the Guinness Book of World Records. That’s because it’s got the world’s largest solar mural on its side. The artwork covering the Sunrise Building in Edmonton, Canada, incorporates solar panels providing clean energy and saving money for the residents.

The solarpunk aspects of this project don’t stop there. According to Nice News, the 1970s block required extensive improvements to make it liveable for renters today. Rather than tearing it down, the real estate investment trust Avenue Living partnered with the Mitrex solar panel company to gave it a green renovation. Repurposing and augmenting what we’ve already got rather than demolishing and building from scratch is very much the Rooted shade of solarpunk we favour at SolarPunk Stories.

We’ve added a lot of subscribers since we first published our deep-dive on what solarpunk is back in 2022. That’s why we’re sharing a concise explanation of our scene in this post. It’s for all of you who’ve come more recently to this newsletter and as a refresher for those OGs who have been with us for a long time (love you guys).

LOS ANGELES — To many locals, the Los Angeles River — hugged by concrete embankments and heavy vehicle traffic — hardly seems like a river at all.

The waterway bisecting the city was converted to a giant storm drain nearly a century ago to contain flood waters. Today, it's an extension of the urban network of concrete, running beneath freeways and bridges as it collects all kinds of refuse: spent tires, scrap metal, trash thrown from car windows.

But when Doug Rosenberg came upon a shopping cart tipped over in the river's shallow waters back in 2020, he saw the potential to meet nature halfway.

"It had begun to bloom some greenery around it, and there was a great blue heron perched on the cart, hunting in this little spot," Rosenberg recalled. "That was when it clicked for me — that any 3D geometry at all in that river channel will trap sediment, will begin a micro-bloom of ecosystem."

The 36-year-old artist saw an amusing paradox — life sprouting from the metal cart — that planted the seed for his next project: a pop-up wetland in the middle of the LA River.

In a desolate part of downtown, he pushed large rocks from the riverbanks into the water and arranged them in loose, concentric circles. The structure would trap sediment, allowing life to take root.

A mobile skatepark moving between displacement camps in Gaza is providing rare mental health support to children trapped in one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, where trauma and grief are rife.

Amid the wreckage of Gaza City, where collapsed buildings and twisted concrete dominate the landscape, a group of young Palestinians has transformed the destruction into an unlikely playground.

Since the fragile ceasefire began on October 10, skateboard coaches have been running sessions that offer traumatised children brief moments of freedom and normalcy.

Thanks to our anti-social social order, many people are struggling with a lack of community in their lives. We can change that. Let's revisit the village of the past then sketch out a radical vision for the future of community.

Artists, designers, futurists, environmentalists, and dreamers are invited to make submissions for a Digital Art Exhibition for the forthcoming ‘Southeast Asian Solarpunk Art Project’ on 4 October 2025.

The call is organised by EnergyLab Asia, a non-profit driving Cambodia’s energy transition, in collaboration with Micro Galleries (a global art collective), Sambor Village hotel in Kampong Thom and Seapunk Studios (a network of creatives around Southeast Asia).

The open call invites artists, designers, and creatives from across Southeast Asia to submit digital artwork for an exhibition to be held at F3 – Friends Futures Factory in Phnom Penh on 4 October as part of Clean Energy Week.

The project seeks to inspire a hopeful, sustainable future through art, countering climate pessimism and empowering local communities.

The proposals should be for digital artworks that envision a sustainable, hopeful future rooted in local culture and community resilience. Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement, close to the hopepunk movement, that envisions and works toward actualising a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. The ‘solar’ represents renewable energy and an optimistic vision of the future that rejects climate doomerism, while the ‘punk’ refers to do-it-yourself and the countercultural, post-capitalist, and sometimes decolonial aspects of creating such a future.

Artists retain full copyright, and printing costs for the exhibition will be covered by the organisers. Works may be toured or shown online in the future, powered by Microgalleries. Eligibility

Artists of any medium and career level, primarily from Southeast Asia can apply.

This is an online course (Eastern Time)

Encompassing art, theory, and speculative fiction, solarpunk is a vision of futurity that asks: What sort of world can result from the alignment of nature and technology? Gesturing, on the one hand, to the sun—a resource, by its very nature, inhospitable to private property logic—and, on the other, to counterculture, solarpunk sees decommodified energy, sustainably harnessed, as core to human liberation. In contrast to the pessimism that, in the age of climate change, increasingly marks our cultural and political sensibilities (as well as certain strands of critical theorizing), solarpunk embraces a so-called radical optimism: its speculative fictions describe utopias; its aesthetics and architecture orient themselves to communalism; and its theory postulates a harmony of technology, nature, and human life (and the ability to achieve it)—even in the midst of climate catastrophe. But what would it mean—culturally, economically, politically—to “align” technology and nature? What, exactly, counts as nature? Why, pace the solarpunk imaginary, is “free” energy crucial to human emancipation? And what, more generally, is the value of speculative thinking and literature? Are solarpunk optimists, to borrow from Ursula K. Le Guin, “realists of a larger reality?”

This course will focus on the philosophical and imaginary turn towards radical optimism in the face of climate change. We will delve into the art, theory, and fiction associated with solarpunk, in order to think about problems of technology, nature, and productive human society—and how nature and material life can be integrated beyond systems of exploitation and oppression. We’ll consider the uses of utopia, the attractions of science fiction for non-capitalist thinking, the meaning of sustainability, debates over growth and degrowth, and the philosophical and cultural significance of affects of optimism and pessimism. Is contemporary pessimism a form of realism, or a lack of imagination? Readings will include works and excerpts from Ursula K. Le Guin, Kyle Powys Whyte, Andreas Malm, Rebecca Solnit, Becky Chambers’s Monk and Robot duology, and emerging literature within the solarpunk movement—both theoretical and literary.

Demonstrators in Kathmandu have defied a curfew and broken into and set fire to the parliament building. They had earlier stormed the office of the Nepali Congress, the country’s largest party, and several prominent politicians’ residences.

Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli stepped down on Tuesday amid escalating anticorruption protests. The resignation came a day after 19 people were killed by security forces in violent demonstrations sparked by a social media ban.

Exuberant young people flooded the parliament complex upon hearing the news, waving their hands and shouting slogans as smoke billowed from parts of the building.

Solarpunk: A genre and a movement...

solarpunk dc, the movement, draws inspiration from solarpunk, the artistic genre. It began as an optimistic counter-movement to cyberpunk’s dystopian futures where artists and writers imagined communities powered by renewable energy, lush with green spaces, and fueled by collective care rather than collapse.

Over the last decade, solarpunk has evolved into both an ethos and a call to action. Instead of simply envisioning a better world, people are now actively building it.

In Washington, D.C., a city known for politics, but also home to vibrant neighborhoods and green innovation, the solarpunk spirit is already in motion.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the five pillars of the solarpunk ethos and how they’re coming to life in our region. Then we’ll tell you about our upcoming pop-up event with Big Planet Comics, where you can experience the genre firsthand, complete with a solarpunk starter kit, tote bag giveaways, community convos, and tasty drinks + snacks…all in an intimate space. 📒🌿