Solarpunk and eco-dreaming - BlogFlock

Sharpen Your Story with Arc & Spine Editorial Services - Solarpunk Magazine

2026-01-27T17:47:17.000Z

If you’re crafting climate-positive fiction, nonfiction, or essays, if you’re writing sci-fi, fantasy, or horror short stories, novellas, or novels, and you want an editorial process that respects your voice while strengthening your manuscript from the inside out, you should know about Arc & Spine Editorial Services — a craft-focused editorial studio led by our co-editor-in-chief Justine Norton-Kertson.

At Arc & Spine, the focus isn’t just surface polish. The goal is to meet authors where their work already wants to go: developing structure, plot momentum, emotional resonance, clarity, cohesion, and voice. Whether you’re shaping a first draft, refining a polished manuscript, or strategizing revision pathways, Arc & Spine offers a range of services tailored to your project’s needs.

What Arc & Spine Can Do for Your Manuscript

Arc & Spine’s offerings extend across the editorial continuum — from big-picture developmental edits to fine-tuned line edits and final polish:

The Arc Edit — Focuses on structure, pacing, narrative logic, character arc, and thematic cohesion for fiction and nonfiction manuscripts.
The Spine Edit — Enhances clarity, flow, consistency, and voice at the sentence and paragraph level without smothering your unique style.
Full Manuscript & Combo Edits — Bundles comprehensive structural guidance with detailed stylistic refinement.
Final Proofreading & Quality Control — Gives your manuscript the last check before submission or self-publication.
Story Blueprint & Manuscript Mentorship — Great options if you’re in early planning or want ongoing editorial partnership.

Arc & Spine provides a free two-page sample edit and quotes each project individually based on genre, length, and depth of work — with payment plans available for longer projects.

Arc & Spine Editorial

Why It Works

What sets Arc & Spine apart is how it balances big-picture insight with careful attention to craft. Their approach isn’t about rewriting your words — it’s about helping you see what your work is trying to be, then guiding it toward a stronger, clearer expression. And because strong storytelling is crucial to solarpunk futures, this kind of craft-driven editing can make all the difference in connecting your ideas to readers who care about ecology, justice, and hope.

A Note on Submissions and Conflict of Interest

Important: Because Arc & Spine is run by Justine Norton-Kertson—who also serves as co-editor-in-chief of Solarpunk Magazine—any short stories edited by Arc & Spine are not eligible for submission to Solarpunk Magazine. This ensures a clear editorial boundary and avoids conflicts of interest between our editorial process and external manuscript services.

Ready to level up your stories?
Learn more and request a free sample edit from Arc & Spine Editorial Services.

Solarpunk Magazine Year 5, Issue #25 - Solarpunk Magazine

2026-01-20T17:18:07.000Z

Issue twenty-five heralds five years of continuous publication for Solarpunk Magazine; I welcome our readership to this celebratory editorial! In five years, we have experienced a wonderfully diverse cast of editors with origins all across the globe. I thank our editors, past and present, for the efforts extended in service to Solarpunk Magazine and its mission. I thank our authors and artists for trusting our title with their works, many of which are informed by the traumas of enduring climate disaster firsthand. I thank our readership for their support of not only our magazine, but of the hopes and practices extolled within.

Get Issue #25

The past five years saw the creation of unique magazine issues and events. In our founding year, we published “Colorful Roots,” our annual summer issue that exclusively features creators of color. We’ve enjoyed several collaborations, including the issue we co-created with Paid Time Off Magazine and Jobs With Justice in 2022. My cohort and I have appeared on a number of speculative fiction panels, including the “Hopepunk” panel presented via the Watertown Public Library in 2023 and the “Fistfights in Utopia” panel at the 2024 Solarpunk Conference. We fondly remember the panel “Recovering the Human in Energized Futures,” delivered at ASU’s Anticipation 2022 conference, which we developed with Clark A. Miller, Joey Eschrich, and the Land Art Generator Initiative. In March of 2025, Accelerate Resilience Los Angeles hosted SO[L.A.]RPUNK, a small-scale event that facilitated the meeting of solarpunk editors and authors (here is where I met my co-editor, Justine, for the first time in person!); we are grateful for the continued support and guidance on behalf of ARLA. In late 2025, Solarpunk Magazine achieved nonprofit status, thus saving the publication from a financially uncertain future; our ability to generate funding has broadened exponentially, and as a result, we have raised our author pay rates beyond SFWA standards.

As a reflection of what I have learned since Solarpunk Magazine’s inception, I have redrawn our official website banner. Its predecessor was the first piece of art in the solarpunk vein that I had ever created, and it wears its inexperience enthusiastically. Note the haphazard composition of non-infrastructure:

While the buildings remain unidentifiable, the joy and whimsy is apparent. Clearly this iteration is informed primarily by fantasy and less by function; though I don’t disagree with fantastical solarpunk media, my views of the genre have changed to align more with praxis. The newest version (which also serves as this issue’s cover art) retains color and adds people, food sources, energy sources, and transportation. Below the new banner is its compositional inspiration–the view from the adjunct office on the SUNY New Paltz campus, where I work as an English adjunct professor.

I intended for the infrastructure to appear multi-use; facilities that might serve as community hubs and silos also function as vertical farms. Solar panels, photovoltaic windows, and windmills allude to a diverse energy portfolio that relies on the availability of local energy sources. Shuttle systems move people between facilities distanced by native flora. Monarch butterflies signal the return of their migration–I drew on my memories of undergrad, when their ascent cluttered the airspace and I had to drive slower than usual. The peregrine falcon is a nod to the work of falconer, conservationist, and SUNY New Paltz professor Heinz Meng, who bred the species back from the edge of extinction in 1971. Two dovecotes provide local fertilizer and shelter for pigeons. Vultures acknowledge the cycle of death in a scene abundant with life. A paper wasp and bottle fly represent overlooked and oppressed pollinating invertebrates. Lastly, gourds are one of humanity’s first vessels. They allowed us to carry water and music. I grow these in my garden.

This brief respite cannot end without a call for activism. We call on our peers in the United States to resist the total fear imposed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We urge you to know your rights in the event of contact with an ICE agent and to share this knowledge with others. We at Solarpunk Magazine stand with the murdered victims of ICE, including Keith Porter and Renee Good. We stand with our immigrant and migrant communities. We stand for the enduring freedom of the exploited Global South and reject the imperial reach of the West.

Here are the works featured in issue twenty-five of Solarpunk Magazine:

Jeff Hewitt’s “Built to Spec” is a script that explores the story behind an architect’s work with a mysterious geodesic dome.

Rae Mariz expands upon a futuristic world published as multiple stories across various platforms in “The Impossible Puzzle.” This narrative follows Auntie Cade’s efforts to comfort a newborn amid a storm.

We share the works of Mari Ness and Pratibha Kumari within our poetry section.

In “How Sociopathic Power Changed my Life and What it Taught Me About War,” Aya Al-Hattab, a Palestinian journalist currently residing in Gaza, draws from a past experience with a peer in her analysis of pathocracy. This article is the first in a series by Al-Hattab titled Radical Hope from Gaza.

Wren James discusses the creation of a climate fiction writing guide that challenges the overrepresentation of dystopia within cli-fi in “Creating ‘The Climate-Conscious Writers Handbook.’”

Please enjoy issue twenty-five and join us in celebrating five years of publishing!

Brianna Castagnozzi
co-Editor-in-Chief | Solarpunk Magazine

What Solarpunk Events Would You Attend? - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-12-22T19:04:36.000Z

We’re running a poll to evaluate some potential future programming. In particular, we’re trying to gauge which in-person solarpunk events the community is interested in attending.

To participate in the poll, CLICK HERE and then please select any and all of the events you would be interested in attending if they were planned and hosted by Solarpunk Magazine.

Author Pay Raise and Solarpunk Horror Themed Issue - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-12-02T19:30:37.000Z

January 2026 marks the 5th anniversary of Solarpunk Magazine‘s first issue. As we look toward that date and the future, we’re thrilled to share two major announcements that reflect our ongoing commitment to uplifting creators, nurturing bold imagination, and building the future we want to live in.

We’re Raising Our Author Pay Rates

Since our founding, we’ve worked hard to ensure that Solarpunk Magazine pays authors in line with professional industry standards for genre literature. As we enter our fifth year, we’re proud to announce that we’re increasing our author rates across the board.

Beginning with Issue #25, which publishes in January 2026:

Fiction: increases from 8 cents per word to 10 cents per word
Poetry: increases from $40 to $50 per poem
Nonfiction: increases from $75 to $100 per article

We know how much labor, heart, and hope goes into creating the kinds of stories that push culture forward. These new rates are part of our ongoing effort to honor that work and support the writers shaping solarpunk’s evolving landscape.

Announcing Our November 2026 Theme: Solarpunk Horror

We’re also excited to reveal that our November 2026 issue will be a special themed issue: Solarpunk Horror.

Writers who want to submit to this issue should do so during our July 2026 open submission window. As always, we encourage creativity, experimentation, and boundary-pushing visions—this time, through the lens of solarpunk’s shadows and uncanny edges.

More information about the theme, along with guidance for authors, is available on our Submissions page.

Thank you for being part of this growing movement. Five years in, we remain inspired every day by the artists, activists, dreamers, and disruptors who make solarpunk what it is—and who keep imagining what it might yet become.

Here’s to the next five years of radical hope, transformative storytelling, and futures worth fighting for.

Demand Utopia!

Subscribe to Solarpunk Magazine today via our website or Patreon.

Winter is Coming: Build a Solar Powered Foot Stove - LOW←TECH MAGAZINE English

2025-11-16T00:00:00.000Z

Image: The electric foot stove that we build in this manual. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

We built an electric cube heater, powered by a 100-watt solar PV panel. During the day, the solar panel slowly heats the cube, which radiates heat to its surroundings. Due to its high thermal mass, the object continues to radiate heat for hours after sunset.

Electric Foot Stove

The heat cube can serve multiple purposes. You can use it as a modern variant of a preindustrial foot stove. Put your feet on the cube and throw a blanket over your lap to trap the heat.

Historically, foot stoves contained glowing sintels from the fireplace, but an electric version is safer and healthier. There is no risk for carbon monoxide poisoning or fire. The heat cube contains no flammable materials.

Image: A nineteenth century foot stove. Source: Museum Rotterdam (CC BY-SA 3.0).

You can also put the cube under a table that has a blanket on top, and that is another method to build an electrically heated table. The heat cube can also quickly dry a pair of socks or keep a prepared dish warm in the kitchen or on the table.

Rather than storing electricity from a solar panel in a battery to operate an electric heater at night, the solar panel stores heat in the thermal mass of the heat cube itself. That’s cheaper and more sustainable, because batteries account for 70-90% of the money and energy invested in an off-grid solar PV system.

Heat can be stored for even later in the night by covering the cube with one or more wool blankets.

Image: The heat cube used as a hand and foot warmer. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

Bricks, Mortar, and Tiles

We created the heat cube using inexpensive and simple materials: bricks, mortar, and tiles. The solar panel supplies power to an electric resistance heater, which we made ourselves and which we laid between several layers of bricks. The electric resistance heater connects directly to the solar panel, without a solar charge controller or voltage regulator in between. If you add more solar panels, the heat cube also works in cloudy weather.

Electric Tile Stove

Our heat cube is relatively small (20x20x25cm), but this manual can serve to build a much larger version, which could take the form of an electric tile stove, which could include a heated bench or sleeping platform.

Tile stoves date back to the Middle Ages and accumulate heat from a biomass fire within a stone or brick mass. They are fired only once or twice per day and continue to radiate heat for approximately 12 to 24 hours. However, a tile stove can also work electrically. In that case, there is no need to add a labyrinth of smoke channels that delays the release of heat through the chimney; instead, only layers of bricks with electric heating elements in between are required. Neither do you need a chimney.

Image: A 1920 tile stove in the "Tautes Heim". Source: www.tautshome.com (CC BY 3.0).

Tile stoves are very heavy, and powering them electrically doesn’t make that any better. Once built, they remain in place. Even our small cube heater is not precisely a portable device: it weighs 26 kg. If you want to move it around, it’s a good idea to put it on a wooden board with wheels mounted underneath. Make sure it can’t slide down a slope.

Solar Oven vs. Foot Stove

This solar-powered cube heater forms part of a larger collection of devices that we built, including a solar powered oven and a solar powered coffee maker. They are all based on direct solar power and heat storage rather than electric energy storage.

All these devices are inspired by tile stoves. However, while the solar oven and coffee maker are designed to keep the heat inside, the cube heater is designed to radiate heat outwards. Therefore, it is the only appliance that has no thermal insulation. That also makes it easier, quicker, and cheaper to build than the others.

Thermostat

The heat cube we built works without a thermostat. Because it has no thermal insulation, there is little danger of overheating and damage to the electric resistance circuit. It’s the room that gets warmer: the cube continues to radiate heat into its environment and maintains a steady temperature. Furthermore, the sun goes down every evening, cutting off the power supply.

However, overheating could occur when you charge the heater with one or more blankets on top, effectively adding insulation, or when you operate it on grid power using an AC/DC converter. To avoid this, you can add a thermostat, which turns off the power source when the surface temperature exceeds a preset limit.

A thermostat can also be helpful when the heat cube surface becomes too hot to touch with bare skin. However, you can also wrap a blanket around it or make a fitting cover, similar to the ones used for hot water bottles. Installing an on/off button provides you with a manually operated thermostat.

What You Need

Six bricks. We used refractory bricks (also known as fire bricks), which are used in high-temperature environments. Refractory bricks are made of silica and store thermal energy very well. However, regular bricks work as well, because they withstand temperatures much higher than those reached in the cube heater. Just make sure the bricks have a 1:2 size ratio, allowing you to create a pile with alternating brick layers.
Mortar. We used regular construction mortar, which can withstand temperatures up to 300°C. Refractory cement combined with sand and water could also work. However, it’s not a requirement because the heater doesn’t reach a temperature of 300°C.
Electric resistance heating element. We made a 100-watt electric resistance heater, which we fixed in the mortar between the bricks. It’s made from nichrome wire and heat-resistant electric cables. See our separate manual.
Tiles. We used ceramic tiles to cover the sides and the top of the cube, and a thicker floor tile at the base. The tiles radiate heat, waterproof the structure, and help to keep it together.
Adhesive mortar. To paste the tiles to the bricks.
A fuse. You add this in the positive wire between the solar panel and the heat cube. Its Amps rating should be slightly higher than that of the heating element. Read more about fuses.
A thermostat (optional). In contrast to the other devices in this collection, the heat cube does not have a thermal switch and thermal fuse. You could add a thermostat to regulate the temperature of the heat cube (see our manual on building an electrically heated table).
An on/off switch (optional). Add this when you don’t have a thermostat.

Image: Step by step instructions to build the heat cube. Illustration by Marie Verdeil.

Building steps

Cut a large and thick floor tile into a square. Its dimensions should be bigger than two bricks lying side by side. We have more information about cutting tiles in the solar oven manual.
Prepare the heat-resistant circuit of 100W. Since we have three layers of bricks, we prepare two separate strands of nichrome wire to evenly spread the heat. One strand goes between the first and second layers of bricks, and the other between the second and third layers. Solder both strands to heat-resistant electric cables. Next, connect these heat-resistant electric cables in parallel. To decide the length and the thickness of the nichrome wire, and other building steps, consult our separate manual.
Prepare some construction mortar following the package instructions. Apply some mortar to the bottom tile and place your first brick on top of it. Add some mortar on the inner side of the second brick before pressing it next to the first brick.
Add a generous amount of mortar on top of this first level and place the first part of the resistance circuit, ensuring the nichrome wires are spread evenly, don’t cross, and remain in the center. Take care that the nichrome wire doesn’t come closer than 5 cm to the sides of the cube, otherwise the surface becomes too hot.
Cover with more mortar and layer a second level of two bricks, perpendicular to the first one.
Place some mortar on top of the second level before laying down the second part of the circuit. Make sure the ends of both circuits are on the same side of the cube and that the heat-resistant cable ends extend at least 5 cm beyond the cube. We will connect them in parallel later.
Place the last layer of bricks, perpendicular to the second level. Use the leftover mortar to fill the holes on the edges of the bricks.
Wait 24 hours for the mortar to cure.
Solder the two separate circuits together in parallel, ensuring there are a few centimeters of space left to extend the circuit with regular cables later.
Prepare some adhesive mortar and cut the tiles for the five sides of the heating cube (except the bottom).
Drill two holes for the cables through the tile on the side where they stick out.
Apply generous amounts of adhesive mortar on all sides and cover the surface. Let it dry according to the mixing instructions.
Once dry, apply grout in between the tiles’ edges.
Connect regular electric cables to each strand to create a power supply cable. We made it 1m long. Optionally add connectors at the end of each cable. The simple resistance circuit has no polarity.

Image: Six bricks form the main mass of the heat cube. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

Image: All bricks are fixed to each other with a mortar layer that also has the electric resistance heating elements inside. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

Image on the left: Tiling the heat cube. All tiles are provisionally taped around the bricks. Image on the right: Grouting the cube. Two holes in the side made to let the cables pass through. Photos by Marie Verdeil.

Credits:

Concept: Kris De Decker
Design: Marie Verdeil
Construction and documentation: Marie Verdeil, with assistance from Hugo Lopez.

How to Brew Solar Powered Coffee - LOW←TECH MAGAZINE English

2025-11-09T00:00:00.000Z

Image: The solar powered coffee maker that we build in this manual. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

There are many different methods for making coffee, some more energy-efficient than others. However, there are no coffee makers that you can power with a small solar PV panel. For example, a commercially available 12V DC drip coffee maker requires a solar panel of 300 watts to brew coffee and keep it warm.

The key to making a more energy-efficient coffee maker is insulation. Regardless of which conventional coffee maker you purchase, it will typically have little to no heat insulation, and most of the heat generated by the energy source will be wasted into the environment. Therefore, we made an insulated solar electric coffee maker ourselves.

Our coffee maker operates on the same principles as our solar-powered oven and runs on a 100W solar panel. We embedded an Italian coffee maker—a moka pot—in a mortar slab, surrounded by cork insulation and a layer of ceramic tiles.

We embedded an Italian coffee maker—a moka pot—in a mortar slab, surrounded by cork insulation and a layer of ceramic tiles.

Image: Connecting the coffee maker to a solar panel. Photo by Hugo Lopez.

Image: Cross-section of the coffee maker. 1. Tiles, 2. Cork, 3. Mortar. Illustration by Marie Verdeil.

The cooker has an electric resistance heating element integrated inside, which is directly connected to the solar panel without a battery, solar charge controller, or voltage regulator in between. Although it’s solar-powered, the coffee maker can be located inside your kitchen or next to your bed—only the solar panel needs to be outside.

Although it’s solar-powered, the coffee maker can be located inside your kitchen or next to your bed—only the solar panel needs to be outside.

The moka pot was invented in 1933 and uses pressure rather than gravity or a pump to brew coffee. It consists of a bottom chamber (a boiler that acts as a base), a funnel filter with a plate and a rubber joint, and an upper chamber where the coffee is collected. Just before the water boils, the steam increases the pressure inside the heating vessel, pushing the water through the filter and the ground coffee. The moka pot is an energy-efficient appliance, comparable to a pressure cooker for food.

How to brew solar-powered coffee

Once the solar panel receives sunlight in the morning, the coffee maker will start heating up. Consequently, if you put water and coffee in the machine in the evening, the sun will brew your coffee in the morning. Coffee is often a collective beverage and our coffee maker is most practical when several people use it. The first coffee takes roughly one and a quarter hours to make. However, once the mortar slab is warm, subsequent brews take only 20-25 minutes.

Preparing the coffee works similarly to a regular moka pot. You unscrew the top part and remove the funnel, fill the bottom part with water until the valve, place the funnel back, fill it with ground coffee, and then screw the top part back on. To serve the coffee, you unscrew the top part using the longer handle we attached to the moka pot. The handle was inspired by the Arabic raqweh.

Image: Unscrewing the top part of the moka pot. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

Image: Preparing coffee. Photos by Marie Verdeil.

Image: Serving solar-powered coffee. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

Our coffee maker is the first insulated cooking device we built, and there is room for improvement. It doesn’t produce the characteristic gurgling noise when the coffee is ready, probably because the temperature isn’t high enough.

Also, not all water evaporates. Therefore, cleaning involves placing the base under the tap, letting water run in, shaking, and then turning the coffee maker upside down to empty the base. That’s a bit impractical, because the appliance weighs 10 kg.

Because the coffee collects in the upper chamber, it is not kept warm by the mortar slab and the cork insulation. We solve this by wrapping one or more towels around the top part to keep it warm. Alternatively, you could incorporate heat insulation into the design, for example, with a tea cozy.

What you need

Image: The moka pot that we started with. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

Moka pot. Choose the size you need. If you get a second-hand device, make sure that the rubber seal is still in good condition. Also, ensure you can easily take off the handle to replace it with a longer, straight handle.
Mortar. Any construction mortar will work. Make sure it’s not too coarse. Read more about mortar in our solar oven manual.
Metal reinforcement. We pour quite a big chunk of mortar, so we reinforce it with a metal mesh to prevent it from breaking. We use a frying sieve. Chicken wire mesh shaped in a cylinder will work as well.
Cork. For thermal insulation, we use cork sheets available at home decor shops.
Tiles. Read more about tiles and tiling in our solar oven manual.
Chimney. Because the water chamber of the coffee pot is sunk in mortar, you need a way to maintain an opening around the valve to release pressure if the coffee maker overheats. We use a metal pastry bag tip, but any metal tube will work. You can also cut a piece out of an aluminum can and roll it up.
Nichrome wire, heat-resistant electric cable. These are the components for building an electric resistance heater (see our separate manual).

Step 1: Thermal mass and electric resistance heating

Image: Step-by-step instructions (figures 1 to 9). Illustration by Marie Verdeil.

fig. 1 — Start by making a mold for the mortar base. Since the moka pot is circular, we decided to shape our cooker’s heating element into a larger cylinder. Get a wooden board. Use a plastic sheet to form a cylinder and tape it to the board with duct tape. We use an old plastic office folder and shape it around a round cork pad that we place on the wooden board.
fig. 2 — Prepare some mortar and pour a layer of about 2 cm at the bottom of the mold. Let it cure for a couple of hours.
In the meantime, prepare your electric resistance circuit based on the instructions in our manual. We made a circuit with two nichrome wires in parallel (2 x 64 cm) for a resistance of 3.2 Ohms at 18V. It draws around 5.5 Amps.
fig. 3 — Make two holes in the plastic mold to weave the heat-resistant electric cables through. Distribute the resistance wires evenly on the surface of the mortar layer. Make sure they do not touch each other.
fig. 4 — Prepare some more mortar and pour it on top of the first layer so that the electric heating circuit is completely submerged.
Add the metal mesh. Gently press it into the mortar. Ensure it doesn’t touch the nichrome wire and that there is sufficient space in the center for the pot to fit. Add a bit more mortar if necessary so that the mesh is trapped at the bottom. Wait for a couple of hours for it to set.
fig. 5 — Cut the chimney tube at an angle to fit snugly around the coffee pot valve while pointing up. Attach it to the moka pot body with hot glue or clay to ensure it stays in place while pouring mortar. It will later be submerged in mortar.
fig. 6 — Place the coffee pot on top of the mortar layer, in the center. Remove the handle; otherwise, its tip would get stuck in the next mortar layer. We’ll replace it with another handle later in the building process.
fig. 7 — Prepare more mortar and pour it into the mold, around the coffee maker. Fill the mold up to the screw rim of the coffee pot. Let the mortar cure for at least 24 hours.
fig. 8 — Once hardened, remove the plastic mold sheet.
fig. 9 — Let the base dry for an additional 48 hours. Position the base on top of a grid to allow the bottom to dry as well. The mortar should feel completely dry to the touch.

Image on the left: The mold for the mortar slab. Image on the right: The electric resistance heating next to the mold in which the mortar is cast. A metal mesh sieve acts as a reinforcement inside. Photos by Marie Verdeil.

Image on the left: The electric resistance is embedded in the mortar. Image on the right: The moka pot, with the original handle removed, in the mortar slab. The chimney is glued to the base. Photos by Marie Verdeil.

Step 2: Insulation

Image: Step-by-step instructions (figures 10 to 15). Illustration by Marie Verdeil.

We insulate the mortar slab with a 2 cm thick cork layer on all sides (including the top and bottom). We use rectangular and circular cork sheets, 4 mm thick, which means we use five layers.

fig. 10 — Layer 5 circular cork pads for the bottom part. Use wood glue to secure them together.
fig. 11 — Use another five cork pads for the top. Cut out a circle in the middle, about 2 cm wider than the coffee pot, so that there is room to add a plaster protection to the cork. Glue them together.
fig. 12 — Start cutting and layering cork sheets around the cylinder, using painter’s tape to keep them in place. In each layer, make two holes to weave the electric wires through.
fig. 13-15 — Before adding the last sheet, decide where you want to route the cables from the electric heating resistance. You can cut away a path into the last but one layer of cork to allow the wires to pass. We let them out at the bottom. Add the last sheet of cork (fig 15.). Use some tape to secure it.
At this stage, you can run a test. We used water only, in order not to stain the cork with coffee. Test how long it takes for the water to reach the top chamber.

Image on the left: Cork sheets on top of the finished mortar slab. Image on the right: The device is covered in cork and ready to test with a wattmeter. Photos by Marie Verdeil.

Step 3: Tiling

Image: Step-by-step instructions (figures 16 to 21). Illustration by Marie Verdeil.

We chose to cover our coffee maker in glazed tiles. They are waterproof, easy to clean, and commonly used in kitchen furniture, walls and counter tops. Tiles are easy to adapt to various shapes and are aesthetically pleasing. Furthermore, they are easy to obtain and tiling doesn’t require expensive tools.

fig. 16 — First, prepare the surface for tiling. Adhesive mortar doesn’t stick well on cork, so start by covering the cork with plaster. We used plaster bands, similar to those used for medical casts. The bands also help to keep the cork sheets together and fill the air gaps. At this stage, protect the coffee maker with painter’s tape to prevent it from getting plastered.
Leave the plaster to dry for 24 hours.
fig. 17 — Once the plaster has dried, you can tile the surface. We found vintage glazed tiles on the street that we cut into strips and sanded off their sharp edges. For the top part, we use tile fragments from tiles that shattered during the cutting process. Mix approximately a cup of adhesive mortar for walls (which is stronger than adhesive mortar for floors). Using a spatula, spread some mortar at the back of each tile before pressing it against the cylinder. Leave a gap of a few millimeters between each tile for grouting. Repeat this process for the top, and ensure the chimney entrance remains clear. Leave everything to dry as indicated on the mortar packaging.
fig. 18 — Now it’s time to grout the tiles. The aim of grouting is to seal the joints between the tiles to avoid moisture and dirt getting in. Mix the grout with water following the instructions on the package. With a scraper, or an old plastic card, press the paste in between the tiles. After about 20 minutes, clean up the excess grout with a damp sponge. Smooth out each grout line with a wet finger or sponge. Leave everything until it’s dry.

Image: Tiling the plastered surface. Photos by Marie Verdeil.

Step 4: Finishing touches

fig. 19 — Add a handle. Remove the original handle of the moka pot, as it has a vertical design that would get stuck in the mortar. Replace it with a horizontal handle, which gives leverage to screw and unscrew the top chamber and helps to serve the coffee. We made a handle out of wood and attached it with a bolt and nut to the coffee pot using the metal attachment welded on the cylinder. A length of about 20 cm is ideal. Use strong wood because the handle needs to withstand significant stress.
fig. 20 — Wiring. Extend the short heat-resistant cable with a longer 1.5 mm² regular electric cable. Use shrink tape to prevent water or coffee from coming in.
Base. Add a 20 mm thick wood base and cork layer to the underside of the structure. It creates room to lift the coffee maker more easily, and protects the tiles from damaging the countertop surface.
fig. 21 — Done! Brew your first solar-powered coffee.

Image: The coffee maker is finished. Photo by Marie Verdeil.

Other ideas

You could also fit the coffee pot in mortar in an existing box, like an old wooden crate or a scavenged metal drum. Instead of tiles, you could use other kinds of coating with a cement, lime or plaster base. You could also decide to integrate the pot in the kitchen furniture counter.

Credits

Concept: Kris De Decker, Marie Verdeil.
Design: Marie Verdeil, with input from Anna Mareschal de Charentenay.
Construction & documentation: Marie Verdeil, with assistance from Hugo Lopez.
Thanks to AkashaHub Barcelona for the workspace. Living Energy Farm & Cal Poly for their pioneering work on insulated solar electric cookers.

Introducing Solarpunk Story Circles: Where Imagination Becomes Action - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-10-15T19:00:54.000Z

For as long as people have gathered around fires, under trees, and in the streets, stories have been the heartbeat of change. They carry memory, vision, and identity across generations—helping us imagine what’s possible and move together toward it.

At Solarpunk Magazine, we believe that stories don’t just reflect the world—they build it. That’s why we’re so excited to announce our newest community initiative:
Solarpunk Story Circles.

What Are Solarpunk Story Circles?

Solarpunk Story Circles are more than just literary gatherings. They’re organizing containers—spaces where readers become storytellers, imagination becomes resistance, and collective vision turns into concrete action.

Each Circle is a local, grassroots hub for storytelling, climate journalism, and community organizing. Members meet regularly—in person or online—to share lived experiences, envision just and sustainable futures, and connect those visions to real-world struggles for climate and social justice in their community.

Think of a Story Circle as both a creative workshop and a micro-newsroom—a place where storytelling and grassroots climate journalism meet. Together, members document what’s happening in their communities, from local climate impacts to acts of resistance and hope. Then, with support from Solarpunk Magazine, these stories are published and shared to amplify the voices of frontline communities.

Click here to learn more and join a solarpunk story circle.

Why Start or Join a Story Circle?

Because the stories we tell can change everything.

When you start or join a Solarpunk Story Circle, you’ll be part of a growing network of solarpunk communities transforming:

Readers and writers into organizers
Isolation into relationships
Imagination into collective action

Circles bring together people from all walks of life—writers, artists, activists, gardeners, technologists, elders, students—to co-create stories that speak truth, spark solidarity, and strengthen local movements for climate and social justice.

Each Circle reflects the passions and experiences of its members, but all share the same core values: collective power, imagination as resistance, accountability to community, accessibility, and transformation.

Click here to learn more about Solarpunk Story Circles.

Or, click here and sign up now!

Why Now?

We live in an age when dominant media often ignores or distorts the stories of those most affected by climate crisis and systemic injustice. Solarpunk Story Circles help reclaim the narrative—putting storytelling power back into the hands of communities themselves.

When neighbors gather to write about the wildfires choking their skies, the floods washing through their streets, or the mutual aid networks keeping them alive, something profound happens. Grief becomes connection. Despair becomes solidarity. And imagination becomes the first step toward transformation.

Be Part of the Movement

If you’ve ever wanted to make a difference, tell stories that matter, or connect with others building hopeful futures—this is your invitation.

Start a Solarpunk Story Circle in your community, or join one already forming near you. Whether you’re a writer, photographer, activist, or someone who just wants to listen and learn, there’s a place for you here.

Together, we can build a network of storytellers and organizers writing the future we all want to live in.

Sign up today to start or join a Solarpunk Story Circle.

Announcing Radical Hope from Gaza: A 2026 Solarpunk Magazine Series by Aya Al-Hattab - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-09-28T19:25:18.000Z

In 2026, Solarpunk Magazine will publish a landmark series of articles by Palestinian journalist Aya Al-Hattab, reporting directly from Gaza amidst the ongoing Israeli invasion and genocide. This six-part series, titled Radical Hope from Gaza, will appear in each of our bimonthly issues throughout the year.

Aya’s work brings an unflinching yet deeply humane perspective to life under siege. Her series for Solarpunk Magazine will illuminate the ways people in Gaza are building and sustaining life in the face of destruction—stories of mutual aid networks, everyday survival, community-led solutions, ecological know-how, healing practices, and visions for peace and a better world.

These are not just reports of endurance; they are chronicles of radical hope, grounded in the daily practices of people refusing erasure, and in doing so, pointing toward the kinds of futures solarpunk imagines: resilient, community-based, and rooted in justice.

_{(Subscribe to Solarpunk Magazine now so you don’t miss out on this impactful and much-needed series of articles straight from Gaza. You can also subscribe via our Patreon)}

About the Series

Across six articles, Radical Hope from Gaza will cover:

Mutual Aid Networks: How communities mobilize to feed, house, and protect one another in the absence of basic infrastructure.
Everyday Survival: Tactics, creativity, and solidarity that allow families and neighborhoods to endure relentless assault.
Community-Led Solutions: Grassroots organizing that responds faster and more effectively than state or international bodies.
Ecological Know-How: How traditional knowledge and resourcefulness provide tools for survival under blockade and bombardment.
Healing Practices: Cultural and collective ways of tending to grief and trauma.
Visions for Peace and Future: Imaginaries of a better world, even under impossible circumstances.

_{(Subscribe to Solarpunk Magazine now so you don’t miss out on this impactful and much-needed series of articles straight from Gaza. You can also subscribe via our Patreon)}

About Aya Al-Hattab

Aya Al-Hattab is a graduate Al-Azhar University who has emerged as one of the most vital journalistic voices from Gaza. She focuses on writing and sharing the stories and experiences of young Palestinians striving for a better future. Her writing has appeared in Mondoweiss, The Guardian, The Electronic Intifada, We Are Not Numbers, and others.

Some of her published works include:

Solarpunk is more than speculative fiction. It is a vision of just, ecological, and liberated futures—and it must be grounded in the lived struggles for survival and justice unfolding today. Aya’s reporting connects the solarpunk imagination to the urgent realities of Gaza, reminding us that hope is not abstract. It is radical, embodied, and made in the hardest of places.

We are honored to provide a platform for Aya’s voice in 2026, and we believe her series will be among the most important works ever published in Solarpunk Magazine.

_{(Subscribe to Solarpunk Magazine now so you don’t miss out on this impactful and much-needed series of articles straight from Gaza. You can also subscribe via our Patreon)}

Solarpunk Magazine is Now a Nonprofit! - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-08-16T16:58:52.000Z

We’re thrilled to share some big news: Solarpunk Magazine has officially been recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

This milestone means that we’re no longer just a magazine—we’re a mission-driven nonprofit dedicated to nurturing solarpunk stories, essays, and art as a public good. For us, this is more than a tax designation. It’s a way to safeguard the values that inspired Solarpunk Magazine in the first place: community, creativity, climate action, and hope for a better future.

Why We Made This Choice

From the beginning, our goal has been clear: to create a platform where writers, artists, and thinkers can explore visions of a sustainable, just, and imaginative world. We’re not here to chase profits—we’re here to build culture and a better world.

We recognize and understand that the nonprofit complex has its issues, and we hold space for that reality as we move forward. At the same time, there’s no better way we know of to ensure that our resources will always flow back into the mission: paying contributors and editors fairly, amplifying underrepresented voices, and bringing solarpunk to wider audiences. This structure protects the magazine from being co-opted by corporate or private interests. Solarpunk Magazine now belongs firmly to the movement, to the community, and to the future we’re all working toward.

What This Means for You

Here’s how nonprofit status directly benefits our readers and supporters:

Tax-deductible donations: Any donation you make to Solarpunk Magazine is now tax-deductible in the U.S. Your support not only fuels our mission—it also benefits you at tax time.
More opportunities for funding: As a nonprofit, we can now apply for grants and partner with cultural institutions, universities, and libraries. This means more ambitious projects, more diverse contributors, and more resources for paying creators and editors.
Community-first publishing: Our nonprofit structure ensures that the magazine exists for the solarpunk community, not shareholders or profit margins. We’re accountable to you, our readers.

Building a Stronger Future Together

This change sets us up for long-term sustainability. With nonprofit status, we can:

Develop bigger and better issues of the magazine.
Expand into new formats—anthologies, audio narratives, live events.
Pay our editorial staff what they’re worth, and support more writers, artists, and essayists in sharing their visions of a solarpunk world.
Build partnerships that help solarpunk ideas reach beyond our pages and into classrooms, community centers, and cultural spaces.

Our vision is to create a lasting home for solarpunk storytelling—a platform that will continue inspiring, challenging, and imagining for years to come.

How You Can Be Part of This

We wouldn’t be here without you in the first place. And now, there are more ways than ever to get involved:

1. Become a monthly donor—your contributions are now tax-deductible. When you become a monthly donor at $25 or more, we’ll email all of our digital magazine issues straight to inbox the day they release. There are also options for annual and one-time donations.

DONATE NOW

2. Spread the word by sharing this announcement with friends, networks, and fellow readers. Just copy and paste the link below:

https://solarpunkmagazine.com/solarpunk-magazine-is-now-a-nonprofit

3. Volunteer your skills, ideas, or connections. As we move forward, we’ll be updating the community with ways you can volunteer to help us grow!

This milestone belongs to all of us—readers, writers, artists, editors, and supporters—who believe in the power of solarpunk to reshape the stories we tell about the future. Together, we can ensure that solarpunk remains a vital, thriving part of the cultural landscape.

Becoming a nonprofit is one more way we’re committing to that vision. Solarpunk Magazine isn’t just a publication—it’s a community project, a shared dream, and a collective act of imagination.

Here’s to the next chapter.
Here’s to a solarpunk future.

Why I Resisted Murderbot… and Why You Should Watch It - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-07-30T00:17:20.000Z

For a long time, I resisted reading Murderbot, despite all the accolades (for reasons I’ll get into in a sec). I just finished watching it on Apple+, it’s brilliant, hopepunk AF, you should definitely watch/read it.

I’ve read Science Fiction since I was a kid in the 70s, and I’ve been a huge fan of “sentient robot” stories all along.

I, ROBOT and BICENTENNIAL MAN were some of my absolute favs, and I was beside myself when I, ROBOT went to film.

These stories pinged hard on my social justice nerves plus there was nerdy cool tech.

I’ve also written stories about the morality and implications of creating “artificial intelligence” both in enhanced humans and machine intelligence.

My Singularity Series is about the human side, with these two short stories directly about limiting bot intelligence (much like Murderbot’s governor module).

So why the resistance to Murderbot?

In short, because AI companies are using the “sentient bot” story as part of their genAI hype and con, both the cozy version and the scary skynet version (and the prospect of “AGI” or “artificial generalized intelligence”).

The longer reason: I’ve been increasingly concerned about our storytelling around AI for a decade.

People still routinely think genAI’s mimicry is the real thing. Lots of humans still fail the mirror test. And they buy into the latest round of hype about the bots “gaining sentience any moment” (helping AI corps get more venture capital and government cash).

A decade ago, when I was writing Singularity and long before chatGPT burst on the scene like a malignant tumor, I was concerned that our storytelling around artificial intelligence wasn’t evolving. We were stuck on skynet and I, Robot (as much as I love the latter).

Science Fiction has had (and is still entrenched in) a nostalgia problem—we keep telling the same stories over and over, and oh yeah, they just happen to reinforce patriarchy, imperialism, and a lot of other bad shit like excusing anything tech does… and this was extremely true in storytelling about bots.

I was talking a lot about this in 2018 (I should go dig up those posts) but basically, we needed new storytelling around tech, machine intelligence in particular, and Hollywood flailed around for a while but the best we got was WALL-E… the worst was Ex Machina and Transcendence type movies.

Black Mirror was the closest to saying “hey, Tech is fuuuuucked up” but as much success as that had, when chatGPT arrived, it was all Terminator and Her (the movie) stories that people reached for.

We’d created a very limited language around bots and the AI corps had weaponized that against us.

This is when I wrote my Black Mirror-esque, anti-AI stories, by the way.

So I was feeling some kinda way when Murderbot broke out and it wasn’t good. It’s on me that I prejudged, but I was thinking “MY GOD we do not need another sentient bot story” and in my defense some stories that had been picked up by Hollywood were VERY BAD (ie genAI apologia).

Murderbot is not that.

The show beautifully uses our fascination with the sentient bot storyline to go full hopepunk with the hippie “clients” of SecUnit and BLESS Martha Wells for that.

I’m resigned to the fact that we’ll have to come in sideways to get hopepunk (much less solarpunk!) concepts out into the mainstream storytelling world.

That is what Murderbot does.

So I was wrong, I’m glad Murderbot is so popular, and I’ll be adding it to my (growing!) list of hopepunk and solarpunk stories that are the NEW stories we need to tell to create a more just and sustainable world.

I won’t say my Singularity series is like Murderbot (not in any kind of plot sense), but if you want hopepunk-y Sci-Fi, that’s what my 4-novel, 7-short-story series of enhanced human/bot intelligence is all about.

(for you to read or listen to while you wait for more Murderbot)

ONE MORE THING: hopepunk storytelling is FRESH.

I talk about this in an article I wrote for DreamForge Magazine:

“Mainstream storytellers across mediums (short stories, books, TV, film, games) are rummaging around in the hopepunk bin and coming up with fresh twists. Hopepunk elements like “cooperative plot line” or “character who chooses radical compassion” enliven these stories and endear the audience.

In other words, hope is popular. Just don’t call it hopepunk.“

(psst… you can share this post on Mastodon or Bluesky; you can find all my books in the drop-down “books” tab at the top; subscribe on the sidebar to get blog posts like this one; subscribe here to get notified when I have news or new book releases; I also have a podcast, Bright Green Futures, about lifting up stories of a more just and sustainable world… because we sure need something different than the one we have)

Walking the Dark Path America is On - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-07-03T16:52:32.000Z

It’s wild to see folks on bluesky wrestling with the knowledge that they’re unlikely to outlive this dark turn in America. And what that means for them, for their kids. I say “wild” because the responses are predictably dark (nihilistic if not suicidal) or tone-deaf (“You gotta keep fighting!”) but so few have walked through what this really means and what to really do about it.

I’ve been grappling with this for years (knowing climate impacts are coming for our entire way of life and it would undo everything, and far sooner than people think), so I’ve worked through a lot of this, and yet the election meant we were accelerating all that, in the worst possible way. That America had chosen this and while we can and must fight it every step, the way you do that now is different. It’s not like I’ve got all the solutions but I’ve got some road-tested ideas and I forget that people are out here still in the very early stages of realizing what all this means.

In some ways, I think the climate deniers were the first to take climate change seriously—it’s just that their response was Oh, hell no, we’re not doing that here! They rejected the very idea that we’re changing the climate of the entire planet with our extraction and pollution because they instantly got what that would mean: an existential threat to the status quo from which they benefit so much. They reject it instantly, strongly, even violently. This is not something you do when you don’t think the threat is real. Meanwhile, folks who actually believe in climate change, who aren’t in denial (at least not that kind), and even those of us actively working in the climate fight… we non-deniers struggle to actually engage with the enormity of what it means to destroy the biosphere you depend upon for life. What does that mean for how you live your life? Raise your children? Do you even have children? Especially when your options are very tightly controlled, that’s how the system self-perpetuates: we all still live inside a system that is destroying itself.

This is not a thing that’s easy to grapple with, and our rhetorical and practical tools are pretty shitty, so I don’t blame folks for defaulting to narratives that look like despair or blind optimism. In context, the deniers are opting into a well-worn narrative as well: work to preserve as much of their current reality as possible, by whatever violence necessary (to other people, even ironically to themselves), right up to the end of their lives—it’s not a good response, but it is one that America is enacting to our collective horror right now.

We obviously need a better response than to speedrun to the end (at least the end of the individual lives of people making that choice)… but we are severely lacking in narratives that are up to that challenge.

There are few voices that are meaningfully speaking to this, but Rebecca Solnit is one of them.

I keep coming back to her and it’s a good thing I’m reading her new work right now, on this Sue Walks the Earth roadtrip across two massive countries (the US and Canada). Today, I’m traversing the beauty of the Canadian Rockies and heading into the oil-state of Alberta right in time (unfortunately) to get caught in the Stampede (this trip is so full of metaphors, it’s almost comical). As I drive, the House will try to decide if it wants to kill America quick or perhaps more slowly. As I huddle in a hotel in Canada, avoiding the crowds, the US will stare down another 4th of July in the land of the “free”. My plans include visiting a bird sanctuary and a Farmers & Makers market, and that too is a metaphor: even as the dominant culture ignores the wildfires burning nearby due to all the oil they’re extracting from the ground underneath them to finance the giant party they’re having, there are still people in that same space trying to protect the fragile beauty of life, still making and growing and baking and singing, still creating things, not least of which is community.

I’m working though Solnit’s latest release, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, as a devotional on this trip, but there are two resonant thoughts she returns to, again and again in her works, deepening and broadening them as she does. I think it’s her life work, this task of interrogating these two ideas (and I think she would agree, but she’s the authority on that, as we all are in our own lives):

that the future is unknowable and we are here to create it
that the fight for a better world is deeply entwined with knowing what we want that world to be

Society is an invention of humanity and as such, we can invent a new one (Le Guin would agree). We choose certainty (of despair or even “everything will work out!!”) because it is easier, or perhaps bearable is a better word. But there is no certainty, there never has been, and this is the least certain time in my sixty years on the planet. And no, I won’t live to see the end of the things begun here, but that’s less important than making sure I continue the work of creation, of inventing the new world, the one that is better, for me as long as I’m still here, for my children and everyone’s children after me, for the entire biosphere of which we are part.

That work looks like strengthening the bonds between people in my network—the bond of them to me but by extension to each other, whether they realize that at first or not. The work, for me, looks like imagining better conceptual models than nihilism and blind “keep fighting!!” boosterism. We need better tools than that. And it involves being in the world—the real one as well as the also-real online one—so I can understand the struggles and help people weather the hard times while they do their part to build better ones.

So today, because I see people engaging in the hard work of understanding the depth of trouble we’re in, I offer Solnit’s words to help:

No Straight Road Take You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain by Rebecca Solnit

The fight for a better world will outlast all of us. That is the eternal thing, the ever-lasting struggle. The uncertainty and unknowability of the future is a curse for a people who want happy endings, but it’s a gift to those engaged in the struggle. Because the possibility of better remains, always, because it is we who will make it so. We who understand our own agency in the world, which varies wildly and has real limits, but it still exists: we can step into the yawning gap between what we have now and what is possible and be part of creating the world we want to see.

It is a grand and terrible adventure to live in these “interesting times.” But this adventure of a roadtrip across two countries, committing accidental diplomacy and intentional connection building, reminds me how different our world looks in different places with different people: some of that is the natural world, but we are part of that. We are simply the part that has big brains and imagination and is capable of choosing to organize ourselves in different ways, some with much better outcomes than others.

And if we can choose these differences, even inside a system that’s currently destroying itself, then we have more power to create a better world than we imagine.

We will do this together, whether we like it or not. That’s the nature of the struggle.

Let’s help each other engage in the fight.

Red Flag: A Horror Series Taking on Patriarchy and Empowering Women - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-06-18T15:35:57.000Z

One of our editor-in-chiefs, Justine Norton-Kertson, is one of the writers and creators of this horror series called Red Flag. It’s all about a coven of witches who flip the script on predatory men by turning them into prey. It’s like Charmed meets Dexter but with social relevance.

They’ve already cast the three main protagonists, have a number of location agreements in place, have access to three soundstages with greenscreens, and plan to begin filming this fall. Their pre-production crowd funder launched yesterday and hit its base funding goal in less than 24 hours!

GO TO KICKSTARTER

Generally, pre-production budgets pay for things like casting, filming permits, wardrobe, props and practical fx prep, and legal fees (for drafting solid cast and crew contracts). So the more they can raise the better the actual production phase (filming) will be.

If you’re a horror fan, or just a fan of Justine’s work, we highly suggest you check out the campaign and throw them some support by backing the project and sharing the campaign link on your social media.

GO TO KICKSTARTER

How to Dress and Undress your Home - LOW←TECH MAGAZINE English

2025-06-16T00:00:00.000Z

Image: "Arabs in the desert", a painting by Vasili Veresjtsjagin. End of 19th or early 20th century. Image in the public domain. Inside the tent, temperatures could be up to 10-15 degrees Celsius cooler than in the surrounding atmosphere.

Thermal insulation is a cornerstone of policies aimed at reducing the high energy consumption for heating and cooling buildings. ¹ In many industrialized countries, building energy regulations require new and existing buildings to have insulated walls, floors, and roofs, as well as double- or triple-glazed windows. In cold weather, insulation slows down the heat loss from the interior to the exterior, reducing the energy use of the heating system. In hot weather, insulation delays the transfer of heat from the outside to the inside, thereby reducing the energy consumption of the air conditioning system.

Modern insulation methods involve the permanent addition of non-structural materials with high thermal resistance, such as fiberglass, cellulose, or mineral wool, to the building surfaces. Viewed in a historical context, this approach is unusual and stems from a shift in architectural style. ² Preindustrial buildings often didn’t require extra insulation because they had a significant amount of thermal mass, which acts as a buffer to outside temperature fluctuations. Additionally, the building materials themselves could have high thermal resistance.

Viewed in a historical context, modern insulation methods are unusual and stem from a shift in architectural style.

For example, in the 12th and 13th centuries, Northern Europeans built thatched houses with straw roofs that were 60-80 cm thick. Walls were often built of clay and straw, which provided excellent levels of both thermal mass and thermal resistance. ³ In contrast, modern buildings are frequently steel and concrete structures that have very little thermal mass. Consequently, they are very sensitive to outside temperature fluctuations.

Furthermore, preindustrial buildings had few and small windows, which were often unglazed and closed only by sliding shutters at night. ⁴ On the other side, modern buildings have large glass surfaces, which results in significant heat losses in winter and high solar heat gain in summer. In hot climates, buildings were also designed for maximal ventilation, for example, through the use of courtyards and building orientation. ⁵ By contrast, modern buildings often resemble one another, regardless of the local climate. All this results in high energy use for heating and cooling, so we add insulation and double-pane windows, especially since the oil crises of the 1970s.

Image: A traditional "Masia" in Arenys de Mar, Catalonia, Spain. Constructed in 1570, it features very thick walls and small windows, which help keep the indoor temperature more stable throughout the year. Image by Ainhoa P (CC BY 2.0).

Image: A traditional Batak house in Indonesia, designed to maximize passive cooling and natural ventilation in a warm and humid climate. The thatched roof insulates against solar heat gains, while the high ceiling and the building's orientation to the prevailing wind direction facilitate the removal of hot air. Photo credit: Mr. Wabu (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Permanent versus Removable Insulation

A return to vernacular buildings, which maintain interiors at a comfortable temperature through architectural design rather than energy-intensive technical installations, could significantly reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling. However, it’s not a short-term solution: it would require a large amount of time, money, and energy to replace the existing building stock.

Fortunately, history offers an alternative solution that can be deployed more quickly and with fewer resources: textiles. Before the Industrial Revolution, people added a temporary layer of textile insulation to either the interior or the exterior of a building, depending on the climate and the season. In cold weather, walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, and furniture were insulated with drapery and carpetry. In hot weather, windows, doors, facades, roofs, courtyards, and streets were shaded by awnings and toldos.

Image: Sigmund Freud's couch in the Freud Museum London. The room features a floor carpet, wall carpet, couch carpet, and pillows. Photo credit: Robert Huffstutter (CC BY 2.0).

Image: Awnings sheltering people on board the "Undine". Illustration for The Graphic, 12 November 1887. Image in the public domain.

Removable insulation can achieve significant energy savings with much more flexibility than permanently enclosed insulation materials. Because modern insulation methods require construction permits and structural interventions to a building, they are expensive, time-consuming, and only accessible to home owners. Furthermore, modern insulation methods are ill-suited for older buildings, in which case they are often not financially and energetically sustainable. ⁶⁷

People can often install removable insulation without obtaining building permits or hiring professionals, making it an affordable do-it-yourself solution within reach of everyone.

In contrast, removable textile insulation is suitable for both new and existing buildings, as well as for renters and owners alike. People can often install removable insulation without obtaining building permits or hiring professionals, making it an affordable do-it-yourself solution within reach of everyone. Removable insulation can be applied quickly and without causing a nuisance to residents and neighbors.

For cooling, textiles have another advantage. Airtight buildings with a permanent insulation layer may overheat dramatically if the electric cooling system fails during a heatwave. ⁸ In contrast, awnings and toldos can keep interiors comfortable independent of an electricity supply.

Winter: Carpets and Curtains

Historically, the use of removable textile layers followed different approaches depending on the climate. In cold regions, for example, in large parts of Europe, people installed various textile “devices” on the interior building surfaces to increase thermal comfort. Some of these, such as curtains and carpets, can still be found in modern interiors, although not to the same extent as they were used in earlier times.

For example, carpets were not only laid on floors but also hung on walls (“wall carpets” or “wall hangings”), draped over tables (“table mats”), and used on other furniture. Likewise, thick curtains were hung in front of windows but also doors (“portières”) or door openings and mounted around beds (“bed canopies” or “bed hangings”). ⁹¹⁰¹¹¹²¹³¹⁴¹⁵ In some regions, people suspended thick fabrics, such as duvets and quilts, from the ceiling during the winter months. ¹⁶¹⁷

Image: Room in a late 16th-century French castle. It features bed hangings and wall hangings in the same color, a floor carpet, and window curtains. Photo credit: PMRMaeyaert (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Image: Hanging an eiderdown beneath the roof of the [Oskar and Zofia Hansen House in Szumin](https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/after-comfort/568034/the-clothed-home/). Photograph by Michał Matejko, 2020.

Image: Embroidered silk bed hangings exported from China, c. 1760-1770. Source: Rijksmuseum. Image in the public domain.

Image: Table carpet woven in cruciform shape, wool knotted pile on wool foundation, medallion design with Ottoman floral motifs on red ground, probably Ottoman Cairo, Egypt, 1550-1600. Source: V&A. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O67146/table-carpet-table-carpet-unknown/

These “home fabrics” were usually made of natural wool, still one of the best-performing insulation materials. ¹⁸ The thermal resistance of wool remains the same whether it’s permanently enclosed in building surfaces or hung in front or laid on top of them. Floor carpets and wall hangings thus slowed down the heat transfer from the inside to the outside of the building, just like modern insulation methods do. Likewise, a set of wool curtains 2-3 cm thick gave a single-glazed window the insulation value of a modern double-glazed window. ¹⁹

Before the 18th century, Europeans imported oriental carpets but only used them on walls and furniture because they considered them too precious to walk on.

The production of wool rugs and carpets by flat weaving and, later, by knotting dates back to at least the early centuries AD in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Far East. However, wool floor carpets only became commonplace in Europe around the 18th century, when carpet production was mechanized. Before that time, Europeans imported oriental carpets but only used them on walls and furniture because they considered them too precious to walk on. For floor insulation, they used animal skins, loose straws, or “rush mats” made from grasses. ¹¹¹²¹³²⁰²¹

Image: "A Carpet Seller, Cairo". A painting by Charles Robertson. Image in the public domain. Before 1892.

Image: "The Somerset House Conference". Spanish delegation on the left, English delegation on the right, a table carpet in the middle. A painting by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, 1604. Image in the public domain.

Image: Rush matting covers the entire floor. "Queen Elizabeth I of England receives Dutch ambassadors", a painting by Levina Teerlinc, 1558. Image in the public domain.

Home textiles also stopped draughts coming in through cracks in building surfaces and window and door frames. ⁹ That is the reason why window curtains evolved to open from both sides. Two-sided curtains can be open, providing daylight and a view while stopping draughts that enter through the poorly sealed joints between the wall and window frame. ¹⁰¹¹

Two-sided curtains can be open, providing daylight and a view while stopping draughts that enter through the poorly sealed joints between the wall and window frame.

During winter, thick and heavy curtains could shield a space from the cold air coming in everytime someone opened the door. Such “portières” can still be found in the entrances of historical public buildings or cafés, but they were common in family dwellings as well. ¹⁰¹¹¹⁶

Fabrics also increased comfort in ways that modern insulation methods cannot. Floor carpets slowed down the conductive heat transfer from the feet to the cold floor, while table mats brought arms and hands in contact with a warmer surface. Duvets hanging from the ceiling, bed hangings, and table mats all accumulated heat from the human body or another heat source in a smaller space. ¹⁶¹⁷

Image: Bed hangings, floor carpet, and table mat. "The Morning Toilet", a painting by Jan Steen, 1663. Image in the public domain.

Image: A door curtain. "Interieur", a painting by Andrea Gram, 1885. Image in the public domain.

Upholstered Chairs, Wainscoted Walls

Textiles could also be combined with woodwork to the same effect. For example, the folding screen was a work of tapestry and carpentry that blocked draughts and reflected radiant heat from a fireplace. ⁹ Upholstered chairs, which appeared at the end of the 1600s, had a cushion encased in the covering material and were padded with feathers, wool, horsehair, down, or rags. ¹² They provided a softer seating surface but also reduced the conductive heat loss from the body to the furniture. ⁹ Pillows also contributed to thermal comfort.

Some decorative devices, consisting of wood or plaster, fulfilled similar functions to textiles. For example, molding stopped draughts and was used to cover joints between walls and floors (baseboards), ceilings (crown moldings), and doors and windows (casings). ⁹²² Some houses had wooden partitions hinged to the ceiling that were let down in winter to concentrate warmth around the fireplace. ²³

Molding stopped draughts and was used to cover joints between walls and floors, ceilings, and doors and windows.

Wainscoting was a type of oak or pine wood paneling typically installed over a wall’s lower portion, a practice that dates back to the late Middle Ages. ⁹¹²²⁴ Such wooden paneling could also be upholstered, further increasing its thermal insulation value. Interior shutters could replace curtains. Box beds were closed on all sides by panels of wood, substituting for bed hangings.

Unfortunately, there is very little academic research on the potential energy savings of home textiles and similar devices, whether used alone or in combination with permanent insulation. There is a handful of older studies that calculate the insulation values of floor or wall carpets, but none examine the combined effects of interior fabrics and other decorative elements. ²⁵

Image: Upholstered armchair made by the Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory, first half of 18th century. Photo credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image in the public domain.

Image: Wainscoted walls. Morgan Woodwork Organization, 1921. Image in the public domain.

Summer: Awnings

The home textiles described above were primarily used to improve thermal comfort in cold weather. The exception is the window curtain, which not only keeps heat indoors during winter but can also keep solar heat out in summer, resulting in a cooler environment. ²⁶ However, for cooling purposes, window textiles are much more effectively used on the building’s exterior in the form of an “awning,” which blocks solar heat before it enters through the glazing. ²⁷

In Europe, both window curtains and awnings only emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries, when glass became affordable enough to allow for larger areas of glazing. ¹⁰¹²²⁰ As mentioned, larger and glazed windows complicate the heating and cooling of buildings. Still, they also have advantages: they provide free solar heat in winter, increase natural ventilation, offer a better view, and allow for daylight throughout the year. ²²⁶²⁸

Window curtains and awnings - the latter usually made of canvas - can reconcile all these concerns. For example, an awning can block solar gain in the summer while keeping the window open for ventilation and continuing to provide a view and lighting. ²⁹ In the 19th and early 20th centuries, European and North American cities were dressed in awnings. Several skyscrapers in New York City and Chicago originally had them, too. ³⁰

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, European and North American cities were dressed in awnings.

However, awnings and air conditioning can be combined, resulting in a significant decrease in energy consumption. Several studies show that awnings can reduce the energy use of air conditioning systems by one-third to more than one-half of the total, yielding energy savings that surpass those of more expensive double-pane or low-emissivity glazing (which is designed to block UV rays). ⁸³¹³²³³³⁴³⁵³⁶³⁷ Nowadays, windows are larger than ever, and so awnings can obtain very good results for a relatively small investment.

Image: A variety of toldos and awnings in a street in Madrid, Spain, in 1919. Image in the public domain.

Image: A house with awnings in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 2014. Image credit: Marcvantveer (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Image: The Tacoma Building in Chicago, 1905. The awnings were later replaced by airconditioning units. Image in the public domain.

Summer: Toldos

Outside of Western Europe and North America, the use of exterior “curtains” for cooling predates the use of glass windows by many centuries. For at least 2,000 years in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean, people used textiles not only to shade (unglazed) windows and doors but also roofs, facades, courtyards, and entire streets. Such textile furnishings are known as “toldos” or “sun sails.”

The classical toldo, made from hemp canvas, is a rectangular or triangular, curtain-like awning suspended by sewn-on eyelets on parallel wires. ³⁸ Micro perforations avoid the stagnation of warm air underneath the shading device. ³⁹

In Ancient Rome, sailors assembled large “velaria” to shade amphitheaters. ³⁸⁴⁰³⁹ In Cairo, Egypt, street and courtyard canopies, or toldos, still characterize the cityscape, especially in some historic neighborhoods. ³⁸ European cities with Islamic roots, such as Córdoba, Málaga, Granada, and Seville in Spain, continue to use or have revived the use of street toldos that span entire city streets and districts.

Although toldos have been used predominantly in desert climates, climate change makes them increasingly useful for temperate climate regions as well.

A 2020 study in Cordoba showed that street toldos decrease the temperature of pavement surfaces, building facades, and roofs by up to fifteen degrees Celsius. ³⁹ Collective shading could thus replace individual awnings, but the cooling effect on buildings depends on street orientation. Although toldos have been used predominantly in desert climates, climate change makes them increasingly useful for temperate climate regions as well.

Unlike air-conditioning, awnings and toldos are robust, low-cost, and technically simple solutions within reach of most households and societies. ³⁹ In Egypt, rather than a top-down development initiated by authorities, toldos are made and installed by residents in a demonstration of an architectural bottom-up movement supported by a local industry of expertise and craftsmanship. ³⁸

Image: Street toldo in Spain. Photo credit: IL-Institute, University of Stuttgart. Image in the public domain.

Image: Street toldos in Calle Sierpes, Sevilla, Spain, 1918. Image in the public domain.

Covered Streets

The boundary between removable and permanent insulation is not rigid on the outside, either. For example, louvered wooden shutters or architectural interventions such as recessed windows and covered galleries can replace awnings and toldos. ⁴¹

Residential streets in Islamic cities could be either partially covered by cantilevered buildings or totally by additional living spaces. Shopping streets were often completely covered, either heavily by perforated vaults, semi-heavily by high parapet walls and double-pitched roofs, or lightly by thick planks and reeds. ⁴¹

Trees can also serve as awnings and toldos. Deciduous trees shade buildings and streets in summer while allowing the sun to pass through in winter. However, trees take decades to grow and need water as well, which is often scarce in the regions where toldos have been used traditionally.

Image left: British Counsel Building 1917. People in the hot, arid climate in the Red Sea region have traditionally used an elaborately carved wooden window screen called a "masharabiya" (Egypt), "rowshan" (Saudi Arabia) or "jali" (India, Pakistan). [^11][^28][^36] It consists of a wooden lattice structure that juts out into the street and covers a single window or multiple windows from the top to the bottom of the building. "Shishes", woven grass or reed mats hung in windows and doorways, were the more affordable version for less wealthy people. Image right: Street Scene 1916. Photo credit: [^36].

Image: "The Carpet Bazaar, Cairo", a painting by William James Müller, 1843. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. Image in the public domain.

Textile Architecture: Tents

In all the examples above, textiles form an additional “soft” architectural layer, either on the inside or the outside of “hard” architectural building surfaces. However, the soft architectural layer can also stand on its own. In many parts of the world, rather than living in permanent structures made of wood, stone, mud, brick, or other materials, people inhabited lightweight, portable structures that they made almost entirely of textiles: tents. The tent’s velum serves as a curtain, wall carpet, and awning all at once - there is no hard building surface in between.

The tent’s velum serves as a curtain, wall carpet, and awning all at once - there is no hard building surface in between.

As an academic discipline, architectural history has largely ignored textile architecture, which arose among nomadic peoples or so-called “barbarians” outside the governed, “civilized” world. ⁴⁰⁴² However, tents were as widespread as permanent buildings. They were the preferred shelter when two often related conditions prevailed: a lack of building materials and a need for mobility. Nomadic pastoralists utilized portable architecture across vast stretches of Eurasia, North Africa, and North America until relatively recently, and some still do. ⁴⁰

One can still make strong arguments for the tent, even today, in terms of both sustainability and resilience. First, tents are significantly less resource-intensive to build than permanent structures. Second, permanent buildings need defenses against all types of natural threats, including heat waves, hurricanes, forest fires, flooding, and so on. In contrast, the tent allows you to solve these issues by relocation: you can flee from danger without leaving your home behind. Tents are also safe shelters in the case of an earthquake.

Image: Inside a traditional Azerbaijan yurt. Image credit: G.Fargana (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Image: A yak carrying part of a yurt, 1925. Image credit: Fortepan. Image in the public domain.

Tents for hot and cold regions

Tents were found in regions subject to extreme heat or cold, demonstrating the versatility and effectiveness of textiles in providing thermal comfort. ³⁶ Both the skin-covered conical tent of Northern Eurasia and North America, better known as the “tipi,” and the “kibitka” or felt tent, more popularly known as a “yurt,” were designed for efficient combustion in cold, windy climates. The structures served as a combustion chamber, chimney, and windbreak for the central fire, in addition to functioning as a dwelling. ³⁶

In contrast, the “black tent” of the Middle East was designed to keep the heat outside rather than inside. Most closely resembling the tents we still use today, it was a non-skeletal tent with a prestressed velum, tensed in an aerodynamic shape over minimal wood supports. Unlike the mats and leather awnings of the conical tent and kibitka, the woven vellum made from black goat hair was strong enough in tension to be prestressed. ³⁶ It absorbed heat while providing shade, and as a result, temperatures inside the black tent could be up to 10-15 degrees Celsius cooler than in the surrounding atmosphere ⁴.

Tipis

Image: Blackfoot tipis, 1910. Photo credit: Arthur Rafton-Canning. Image in the public domain.

Image: Model tipi, Cheyenne Central Plains, North America, 1860, buffalo skin and pigments. Unknow Cheyenne artisan. Photo credit: John Bigelow Taylor. Image in the public domain.

Kibitkas

Image: Evening in the Yurt Camp Song Köl (also Son Kul), Kyrgyzstan, 2018. Photo credit: Ninara (CC BY 2.0).

Image: A kibitka in Kyrgyzstan, 2015. Photo credit: w0zny (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Black tents

Image: An encampment of black tents in South Jordan. Source: Drew, Philip. Tensile architecture, 1979/2019.

Image: Bedouin Tents and Occupants. Photo credit: Detroit Photographic Co. Image in the public domain.

Dressing and Undressing the House

In modern buildings, maintaining thermal comfort requires no attention or effort from residents. If it gets colder in winter or hotter in summer, modern heating and cooling systems keep the thermostat-programmed indoor temperature by increasing energy use. In contrast, preindustrial buildings demanded active participation from their inhabitants. It was a common practice to adjust indoor and outdoor textiles according to the time of day, weather, and seasons.

The historical use of removable textile insulation reminds us of the act of dressing and undressing our bodies, which also relies on the weather and the seasons.

The historical use of removable textile insulation reminds us of the act of dressing and undressing our bodies, which also relies on the weather and the seasons. ⁴³ Daily, people opened and closed curtains and awnings depending on the weather and the time of the day. ¹⁰ Street and courtyard toldos were folded together during the night so that the warmth stored in the thermal mass of the pavement and the buildings could radiate to the sky. ³⁵ The same happened during windy weather.

Image: In many historical cases, there were close relationships between upholstery, drapery, and dress. [^11] Detail from: Nicolas Ponce (1746–1831) after Pierre Antoine Baudouin (1723–1769), La toilette, engraving, 1771. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1954, 54.533.12. Image in the public domain.

Image: Odalisque, relaxation, a painting by Francesco Ballesio (1860–1923). Image in the public domain.

On a seasonal scale, rugs and carpets were rolled up in summer to expose the cold stone floor. Bed hangings made of thick materials, used in wintertime, were replaced by lighter textiles in summer, which allowed people to sleep without the nuisance of insects. ¹¹ In Córdoba and other Spanish cities, street toldos are only installed between May and October. ³⁷

Some people also added temporary winter insulation to the exterior of a structure by piling up a low barrier to cold temperatures along the lowest parts of the walls, especially the wall facing the prevailing wind. For example, in the colonial period in North America, Connecticut houses were often banked with turf, piles of leaves, or, near the coast, with seaweed. Even today, in rural areas of the northern US, bales of hay can be seen piled up around the foundations of frame houses. ⁴

Dressing and Undressing the Tent

Tents also demonstrate the seasonal nature of textiles. In Lapland, the tent cover was traditionally made of birch bark in the summer and reindeer skin in the winter. In the Mongolian and Turkish kibitka, the number of felt layers used to cover the tent frame depended on the outside temperature. During winter, two or three layers of felt may have been added, whereas in summer, the side felts were raised approximately half a meter off the ground to ventilate the interior. Native Americans regulated the intensity of the fire by opening and closing parts of the tent. In summer, they left the tipi partially open to the environment. ³⁶

During winter, two or three layers of felt may have been added, whereas in summer, the side felts were raised approximately half a meter off the ground to ventilate the interior.

In black tents, an extra cotton lining, a tent within a tent, could be hung on the inside in winter as insulation against the cold. During the hot season, the tent was left open on all sides. The excellent wind stability of the black tent in strong winds also depended on regular interventions by the inhabitants. Because the open side of the tent faced away from the prevailing wind, a sudden change in wind direction required the residents to remove the front poles to the rear, take down the back wall, and reattach it across the tent’s front. ³⁶

Tents could also have external insulation added during cold seasons. Some people surrounded their tents with wattle walls, while others built earthen walls around them or erected stone or mud walls. In Lapland, people sometimes covered the tent sides with snow in winter. ³⁶ Some native American tribes piled earth and stones all around the base of their tipis to block cold drafts and add insulation. The practice also helped to anchor the structure against winter winds. ⁴

Image: Kyrgyz women placing felt covering on a kibitka tent, 2010. Photo credit: Raki_Man (CC BY 3.0).

Image: Yurt interior in Khövsgol Province, Mongolia, 2023. Photo credit: Bernard Gagnon. Image in the public domain.

Image: Indian Encampment, a painting by Albert Bierstadt, 1862. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Image in the public domain.

Privacy, Noise, Aesthetic Pleasure

While keeping people warm or cool, textiles also served other functions, both in permanent buildings and tents. First of all, they helped to mark off areas for private life. ¹⁰ Spaces were separated by curtains, which disrupted sightlines and muffled sounds. ⁹¹⁰¹³¹⁶ Curtains could screen off certain areas dedicated to specific functions that required restricted access. ¹⁴ Bed hangings offered privacy in the absence of a separate bedroom. ¹⁰

Image: Door curtain covering a house door in Tolve, Italy, 2019. Photo credit: Jules Verne Times Two (CC-BY-SA-4.0).

Curtains and awnings provided privacy without sacrificing thermal comfort. During summer, a door curtain or awning could prevent outsiders from gazing into the interior when the doors or windows were open, allowing some degree of light and air. Rooms separated by door curtains provided some privacy from other residents while allowing air to move. ¹⁰ Textiles also protected people and their possessions from dust and insects, regulated the lighting of interiors, reduced noise, and made speech richer and more resonant. ¹⁵

Finally, home textiles contributed to the adornment of the spaces in which they were hung, “either in their own right or as a backdrop or frame for the display of objects and persons, thus affording aesthetic pleasure and imparting a sense of solemnity, opulence, warmth, or intimacy, depending on the context.” ¹⁴ Textiles were often the most valuable items on display in an interior, and their quality and variety reflected the standing of their owners. ¹¹¹⁴

Textiles were often the most valuable items on display in an interior, and their quality and variety reflected the standing of their owners.

For example, in most households, wall hangings were made of plain wool, linen, cotton, or leather, while the walls in castles, palaces, and rich houses were adorned with embossed leather hangings or tapestries presenting specific scenes or landscapes - made of silk and wool and intertwined with gold and silver threads to add richness. ¹³⁴⁴

Image: Eijsden Castle: Interior billiard room with gold leather wall hangings. Photo credit: A. J. van der Wal, Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Image: The apartment of empress Joséphine in the Château de Malmaison in Rueil-Malmaison, France. The room of the Empress, luxuriously decorated in 1812 in the shape of a tent with sixteen pieces, exhibits the original bed. Photo credit: Moonik (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Air-conditioned, Bare-white Interiors

Nowadays, few of us live in buildings with door curtains, bed hangings, or awnings. The abundance of interior decoration gave way to a minimalist, neutral, and often bare-white interior design devoid of textiles. ⁹¹³²⁰ Likewise, we now prefer to build air-conditioned shopping malls instead of buildings with awnings or street markets covered by toldos. Of course, we can only do these things thanks to a seemingly endless stream of fossil fuels. ⁹

Curtains, carpets, awnings, and toldos have their inconveniences and disadvantages. They require attention and manual intervention, need to be cleaned ⁴⁵, and can pose a fire risk unless made of wool or leather. However, the continued burning of fossil fuels has even larger inconveniences and disadvantages, especially in the long term. Textiles could decrease energy use and enhance comfort and livability in all types of buildings. Toldos could span the streets and roofs of entire city districts. History shows that removable textile insulation works.

Image: A modern interior. What happened to the textiles? Photo credit: JessofWoodnCo (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Image: The Iranians, known for their historical cooling technologies such as wind catchers, have recently built the largest air-conditioned shopping mall in the world. Photo credit: Anakarnia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Unfortunately, building and renovation regulations overlook the thermal insulation properties of carpets, curtains, and other textile devices. You may add as many thick curtains and carpets as you like; however, legislation will still require you to install double- or triple-glazed windows and insulated building surfaces, even though textiles could be just as effective in providing insulation. ⁶

On the outside of the building, awnings may not even be legal. The British Blind and Shutter Association had to fight hard to overturn a ban on awnings by the authorities. ²⁹ And, in case you are considering it, in many countries, it’s forbidden to live in a tent, even if it’s on private property.

Thanks to Louise Morin for the inspiration.

Thanks to Jonas Görgen, Roel Roscam Abbing, and Marie Verdeil for their feedback on an earlier version of this article.

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World Environment Day: Grow the Future With Us! - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-06-05T17:10:27.000Z

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Climate Fiction Pitch Event #ClifiPit - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-05-30T14:55:18.000Z

We’re thrilled to announce our first-ever #ClifiPit event, an all-day pitch extravaganza exclusively for climate fiction authors! Whether your story explores the dystopian consequences and horror of climate disaster, the hopeful possibilities of a sustainable future, or a mix of genres that ties into climate themes, this pitch event is designed for and dedicated to you.

To be clear, this is not a pitch event for Solarpunk Magazine. This event is a service we’re providing that is all about (we hope) you finding editors, agents, and publishers for your climate fiction work. More broadly, this event is about highlighting climate fiction and its value to authors, readers, the book industry, and the world.

Event Details

Date: September 18, 2025
Time: 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM PST
Scroll down for the day-of schedule.
Platform: BlueSky
Hashtag: #ClifiPit

Who Can Participate

Authors: Writers with completed, unpublished manuscripts of climate fiction in any genre or age category.

Agents/Editors/Publishers: Industry professionals seeking manuscripts centered on climate themes.

Learn More

Author Registration

No registration is required for authors to participate in #ClifFiPit. However, filling out the short form below helps us gauge how many authors are planning to be part of the event.

Author Registration

Agent, Editor, Publisher Registration

If you are an editor, agent, or publisher who’s interested in our #CliFiPit event on BlueSky, then please hit the button below and fill out the short form. This helps us keep track of how many industry reps are planning to participate, and helps give authors confidence in their own participation. It also gives us a way to contact you with more information and participation guidelines to make sure you’re prepared on the day of the pitch event.

Industry Rep Registration

For more information including event guidelines, pitch examples, hashtags, and the day-of event schedule, visit our #ClifiPit webpage.

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Issue #21 + Solarpunk Novelette - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-05-20T13:38:47.000Z

Solarpunk Magazine Issue #21 is Here

Issue #21 is now available and features:

Cover Art
“Serendipity” by Augustina Ferrer

Short Stories
“A Whisper of a Chance” by M.L. Clark
“The Mural” by Matthew van Abbema.
“Sultana’s Dream” by Begum Rokeya

Poem
“A Tomorrow We Could Hold” by Joshua Adam Walker.

Essays
“Sultana’s Solarpunk Dream” and “Solarpunk Horror: Where Hope Meets Dread” by Justine Norton-Kertson

Get Issue #21 Now!

The Shape of Change: A Solarpunk Novelette of Movement, Memory, and Renewal

In a future where survival depends on shared energy and collective motion, The Current has kept its people alive through generations of ceremonial dance. Every step, every breath, every carefully choreographed movement fuels the kinetic energy grid that powers their homes, water, and light. But as younger generations drift toward virtual spaces and away from traditions, the lights begin to dim—along with the fragile unity that holds the community together.

Get The Shape of Change

Seventeen-year-old Lani never wanted to be the face of rebellion. But when she dares to challenge the old ways with a rogue celebration of free, unstructured movement, she sparks a

crisis that could either break The Current forever—or transform it.

Poetic, hopeful, and deeply human, The Shape of Change is a powerful story about what it takes to move forward without leaving anyone behind.

Perfect for fans of Becky Chambers & Ursula K. Le Guin, this poetic solarpunk novella celebrates the messy, hopeful work of building together.

Available now from Solarpunk Magazine.

Get The Shape of Change

The Collier Problem: Toward a Definition and Application - NO TECH MAGAZINE

2025-04-15T17:26:42.000Z

A Collier problem occurs whenever a new technology requires the technology it nominally replaces to function due to efficiency limits. Steam ships replaced sailing ships, but without windjammers the steamships could not function. This led to worldwide exports, paradoxically with large sailing vessels often transporting the coal needed by steamships, as they were more economical to operate on long oceanic sea routes.

Read more: Woods, Steven. “The Collier Problem: Toward a Definition and Application.” Image: Unloading coal from a collier on East Beach in the town of Cromer. Norfolk, England. Image taken on 8 March 1912. Public Domain.

SO[L.A.]RPUNK - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-04-14T16:04:10.000Z

On the latest of Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast, host Justine Norton-Kertson reads a piece they read at a solarpunk reading event in March hosted by Accelerate L.A. The piece imagines what Los Angeles might be like a solarpunk future.

Listen Now

TRANSCRIPT

Solarpunk Los Angeles
by Justine Norton-Kertson

The air is crisp, carrying the scent of orange blossoms and wild sage. The hum of traffic is gone, replaced by the soft whir of wind turbines and the laughter of people moving freely through shaded streets. Sunlight reflects off windows coated in solar film, harvesting energy for the neighborhood. Above, a canopy of flowering vines climbs the walls of skyscrapers, cooling the city with leaves that shimmer like green fire in the golden hour.

Los Angeles has transformed. Not through the will of corporations, not through the empty promises of politicians, but through the hands of its people.

The LA River flows again, its banks lined with food forests and solar-lit walkways. Once a sterile concrete trench, it is now the city’s heartbeat, guiding the water, the people, and the future. Bridges, once clogged with smog and steel, are alive with foot traffic, solar rail cars, and murals that tell the story of reclamation. Coyotes and bobcats weave through green corridors that connect park to park, mountain to sea, wild to wild. Monarch butterflies dance over rooftops where gardens overflow with tomatoes, avocados, and spirals of bean vines climbing toward the sun.

The freeways? They no longer belong to cars. Where exhaust once choked the skyline, rolling gardens and bike highways now stretch across the city, shaded by solar canopies that power the homes beneath them. The forgotten corners—empty parking lots, abandoned malls, neglected lots—have been reborn as gathering spaces, community hubs, libraries, and maker spaces where anyone can learn, create, and thrive.

Hollywood, once the playground of the elite, has become something new. A storytelling commons, where the tools of creation are shared, and the stories of the people rise above the static. Open-source VR, holographic theaters, and solar-powered amphitheaters give every voice a stage.

And at night, the city glows—not from neon, but from fiber-optic trees, algae-powered lanterns, and reflective surfaces catching the moonlight. People gather in open courtyards, where the air is filled with music and ideas, and the heat of the day fades into cool breezes from the Pacific.

This Los Angeles—our Los Angeles—is abundant because we’ve reclaimed it. This is a city built for us. Not for the billionaires, not for the landlords, not for the corporations that once drained it dry. This is a city where no one is priced out, no one is disposable, and no one is left behind. Where land is held in trust, energy is shared, and water is sacred.

But make no mistake—this future did not arrive easily. We built it from the ashes of the old. It was fought for. Brick by brick, law by law, vision by vision. It was made by organizers, by artists, by scientists, by dreamers, by those who refused to let the old world choke the new one before it could bloom. We reached down into pavement cracks, planted seeds in abandoned lots, defied those who told us nothing could change. We remembered the truth that cities belong to people—not corporations, not developers, not politicians who barter our dreams away piece by piece.

This is Solarpunk Los Angeles. Not a fantasy, but a blueprint. Not a distant dream, but a revolution already growing in the cracks of the pavement, already taking root in the minds of those who dare to believe in something better.

Tonight is a new beginning.

When you leave here, carry this vision home. Nurture it. Water it with conversations, actions, demands. Tell this story, again and again, until Los Angeles becomes the city we dreamed together tonight.

The future begins in the stories we tell.
The stories we live.
The stories we refuse to surrender.

So, Los Angeles, as you step into the night, let this vision burn bright in your heart:

A city reclaimed.
A city alive.
A city made possible, by you.

This is Solarpunk.
This is our future.

Let’s go build it—together.

How to Prepare (Not Prep) for Uncertain Times… and Build a Better World in the Process - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-04-09T21:43:58.000Z

The world is absolutely crazy right now, and yes, it’s Trump’s fault:

There’s a lot of very understandable free-floating stress (punctuated by moments of terror and glorious protests), but the response I’m seeing is often a reflexive turn toward rugged individualism—Quick! I need to learn how to grow my own food!—a pulling away from community rather than leaning into it.

Not only is that more of a panic response than a logical well-thought-out plan for food security, it’s also a missed opportunity to lay the foundations of a better world.

I can hear you thinking, “Sue, what the actual fuck? I can barely get through the day. I’m trying to survive, here — I don’t have spoons to do extra work to build a better world!”

And this is where you’re in luck! Because building a better world means better, not “extra work that doesn’t actually help me.”

So many endless narratives in our society are built around getting us to engage in “extra work” that only marginally helps you and actively destroys the community bonds and human infrastructure that could actually make your life better.

Share on Bluesky and Mastodon

About That Garden

Go ahead and build a garden! But also: if you buy a farm share, especially from local organic regenerative farmers, you’re doing more than making sure you know your farmer by name (which could come in handy if there’s a real problem with food). You’re doing a bunch of different things at once to build a better world: keeping your money in the local economy, supporting someone who’s literally rebuilding the soil we all depend upon for life, anchoring a small business that literally feeds the community, and creating food resilience for you, your farmer, and your community. Corporate ag does not give a single solitary fuck about you—even if you ignore all the environmental harms they do, they have proven they will jack up prices in a crisis and keep them high, regardless of whether costs are actually higher.

My farmer, Art, hasn’t raised prices in three years—because he knows his customers by name and he wants to keep them. He might be forced to do so in the future, but you know what Art’s pretty much guaranteed never to do? Profiteer off the people buying his farm share.

SIDEBAR: FARM SHARE for those who don’t know what farm share is, it is not the same as a Farmer’s Market (although the same farmers may participate in both). Farm share is like buying a share of the harvest, usually ahead of time, basically “investing” in the farm for the season. It helps the farmer to know he’ll have a certain number of people buying his harvest. Whether the harvest is plentiful or slim, you get a portion. It helps stabilize their risk. Not every farm share practices organic, regenerative agriculture so look for that. A hidden benefit that you don’t realize until you start getting farm share produce is that it’s literally farm-to-table which means it tastes better and it lasts way longer — my farm share produce easily lasts twice as long as grocery store produce because it hasn’t been transported all over the country, burning carbon and aging along the way. All farm shares operate differently, some require prepay but not all, so check out the options you have: Find a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)/ Farm Share near you

My farmer, Art, on the off-season, talking to kids in environmental science classes. Go Art!

SIDEBAR: FOOD BANK I’ve been doing farm share for years precisely because it works to build a more resilient community, and it’s been exciting to see Art’s family-run business grow. Every week during farm season (about 6 months of the year), I pick up my farm share and take some fraction directly to the food pantry. I recently told Art this, and he was very pleased, saying most people wait until the produce has aged before taking the excess to the food pantry, and this was better. I agree! This year, I signed up for a double share just so I’d have extra to take to the food bank (because I knew this summer would have even more hungry people and that was before Trump cut funds to food pantries, screwing both farmers and food pantries). I realize not everyone can do this, but if you can, it’s a great way to level out food access. I strongly believe access to nutritious food is a human right.

Community Gardens

Not everyone has access to farm shares (or can afford them, although check for low-income options—I have a friend who bartered a share for other services), and community gardens are a fantastic option. There are likely many community gardens in your area, even if you live in an urban area, so don’t assume! If not, you can effectively start your own community garden with your neighbors by just coordinating what you plant in your backyards. Or volunteer to harvest food they’re already growing! I have a couple friends with neighbors who have fruit trees that they can’t keep up with, and so they (individually or in groups) coordinate to harvest the fruit, sharing it with the owner and themselves and the food bank. This brings me joy just knowing this happens in the world!

Look for other local food systems: local dairies, local bakeries, food co-ops in particular, which you can find in the farm share directory and which often will have bulk foods so you can cut down on plastic usage.

These things all build a better world: a system where we can feed ourselves without depending on corporations, one that uses less pesticides and other harmful farming practices, one that often literally builds community by coming together to grow and share food (and distribute it widely so everyone has access). You’ll understand your community food resources much better and likely discover a whole network of food systems outside of traditional agriculture that will be more resilient in hard times because the resources are all in the hands of people who actually care about their neighbors and not a soulless corporation.

Look around, see what’s already happening in your community: generally a really good first option before assuming you have to do everything yourself or start something new. This is especially true for food systems. But it’s also a lot less work than learning how to grow tomatoes! (But feel free to do that as well.) The impracticality of feeding yourself quickly becomes apparent: we’re more powerful when we work together, it’s just that that’s been hijacked by a corporate capitalist system that’s busy eating its own tail right now.

If you want resilience in the face of uncertainty, building a stronger local food community is 10/10 a great move.

CAVEATS: I might still plant some garden veggies. I really like having my herb pots, so that will happen for sure. And growing things connects you to the soil, to living things, to cycles of nature. There are so many great things about growing stuff, please do not take any of this as saying “don’t grow a garden!” But if you’re considering it as a panic response to insecurity, there are many other places to put that energy, which actually extends way beyond food.

So let’s talk about the Buyerarchy of Needs.

Changing the Way You Buy Things

Reducing the amount you buy on Amazon and shopping more local (especially with food) is an outstanding start, but this brilliant graphic (created by Sarah Lazarovic, environmentalist, writer and artist), the Buyerarchy of Needs opens up the possibilities much further… straight into a solarpunk future, at least when I look at it:

See on Lazarovic’s Instagram, with links to much more of her work

The Buyerarchy of Needs works really well on its own, which is why I wanted to share the original graphic first, without my commentary. It immediately evokes the idea that there’s a mountain of other possibilities that could satisfy our material needs—and even making us question what those needs really are—that it’s probably the inverse of how we are doing things right now. When I first saw this, my brain lit up like crazy because it encapsulated something I’d been working for years to articulate in my own mind and on social media and in my solarpunk stories… that if we were truly going to get to a just and sustainable world, if we really wanted to decarbonize everything, then we would have to radically change what we thought was “acceptable” in meeting the real and material needs people have for things like clothing, household goods, and more. A rejection of consumerism, of hoarding and acquiring, of simply accumulating things and more things, was a start but not anywhere near enough: we need to stop making new things. We need to repair the stuff we already have.

The Buyerarchy of Needs paints a picture of what that looks like.

So I added my interpretation of what each layer of the buyerarchy represents:

Share on Mastodon and Bluesky

Before I dive into all those lists, this gets at the heart of it:

The reason the Buyerarchy of Needs is radical is because it says “there are alternatives to buying cheap shit from Target to get your needs met”—not all of your needs, sure, but way more than you think. And there’s really nothing cheaper than free, which is what most of the pyramid is.

A complaint I hear a lot about sustainable goods—things that are manufactured with less pollution or fair-labor practices—is that people can’t afford it. That’s only for “the rich.” So first (as I emphasize in my post about solar), the cost of something is only partially reflected in the money you pay—you also pay in pollution in your lungs and in your water and in your soil and in a destabilized climate and all the destruction that brings. But second, if you shift the way you consume, you will actually spend a whole lot less on new things because you’re simply buying fewer new things—you’re borrowing and thrifting, you’re swapping and repairing, so when you do buy something new… you can afford to spend more on something that’s not also dumping toxins in the water and using slave labor. And all that is before the tariff insanity not only jacks the prices up and all around like crazy, it will simply make some goods unavailable at any price because it has shut down countless small businesses.

But you, with the Buyerarchy of Needs as your guide, are insulated from some of the insanity because you’ve…

Ok, not really, but I couldn’t resist.

But as you implement these other ways of buying—as you increasingly opt out of the capitalist insanity, support local businesses, keep the money in your community, and reduce the amount of extraction and pollution required to get your needs met—you are building a better world.

Just like the library, you’re prefiguring a solarpunk future today.

And the more people use these alternative systems, the better they’ll get, the easier they’ll be able to use, etc. But even right away, they make you more resilient. Maybe not untariffable but it’s a strategy for surviving the madness.

Buyerarchy of Needs: Sue’s Expansion Pack

USE WHAT YOU HAVE: repair, reuse, upcycle
BORROW: BuyNothing, friends, neighbors
SWAP: clothing swaps, seed/tool libraries
THRIFT: BuyNothing, craigslist, thrift stores, free stores
MAKE: craft, garden, create
BUY: local, non-corp, co-op, farm share

I’ll expand a little on each of these.

USE WHAT YOU HAVE: this seems obvious but it’s pretty revolutionary, once you start here first with “do I literally have something already that will do the job?” A trivial example: I have these hair ties I bought a long time ago, a pack of like 30, and I rarely use them. They sit in my drawer. I recently was folding zines and needed something to secure several stacks of 25. My immediate thought was: rubber bands! But I don’t have any rubber bands. I mean, I have 3 that I’ve saved from the asparagus, but I quickly ran out. I didn’t want buy rubber bands, especially for such short term usage. Then I realized: hey, the hair ties are perfect! Done. Prior Sue would have probably picked up a bag of rubber bands the next time she was at the Target (which I avoid now, whenever possible). Today Sue is very pleased with her hair-banded solarpunk zines. It’s a small thing, but it’s the shift in mindset that’s important. And it’s not even “frugality” which for some people has negative connotations: it was literally just easier and better to use something I already had.

Repair: repair also seems obvious but can be revolutionary, especially when you start buying things with an eye toward repairability. I recently bought a Framework laptop specifically because it is modular and repairable — I’m not only getting a laptop that will allow me to replace/repair the keyboard (which is always the first thing to go), I’m supporting a company that’s trying to reduce e-waste by building repairability into their product. The internet is a treasure trove of repair videos. You might not have the skills, but someone out there does: repair doesn’t have to mean you. Maybe you hire someone to do the repairs. Maybe you acquire new skills. Maybe you vow to buy from people who build more sturdy stuff in the future. Maybe you buy someone else’s broken thing and fix it up. Repair kiosks and Repair Cafes are becoming a thing. I’ve started a pile of mending. Visible mending is becoming cool. You’ll see the repair revolution everywhere once you start to look.
Reuse/upcycle: reuse is pretty obvious, but it also can mean investing in things that will stand up to reuse better. Or repurposing things. Or supporting the artists/craftspeople who are using their skills to reuse and upcycle all kinds of goods. One of my favorite places to shop now is craft fairs because there is so much creativity out there, and I want to support that! I adored Not a Pot — a young woman who took all kinds of thrift store finds (like ceramic dishes or teapots) and drilled holes in the bottom to make them into planters. Creative, keeping stuff out of landfills, and supports a young person trying to build a better world.

BORROW: one of the casualties of a disconnected world is we’re less likely to go borrow an egg from our neighbors. We can start to normalize that again by being the first to reach out (you may need to return it in the form of baked goods!). But we can also use the technology we have to re-imagine borrowing and sharing. I’m a regular user of my local BuyNothing group (yes, it’s on Facebook but it also has an app — I’m off FB now, but I do keep using it specifically for the BuyNothing group; we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good). If you’re not familiar, BuyNothing (or Gifting With Integrity — search for both in your area, there’s usually only one) is an online free exchange market. See more below in “SWAP” but one of my first encounters on BuyNothing was actually a borrow — someone needed a pop-up shade canopy for an event and needed to borrow one for the weekend. I had one that had been around since the early days of the pandemic. It was great to have it get some use! I see borrow requests get fulfilled all the time in the group, which serves a local geographic area, so you get a chance to meet your neighbors and you’re minimizing the carbon cost of transport. Win all around!

SWAP: I haven’t used this category as much as I should, and I want to explore more! But I absolutely love the idea of clothing swaps and seed swaps, which are specific events, as well as any kind of library economy, like tool libraries, either at the literal library or set up in someone’s front yard. One of my absolute favorite concepts is the craft-reuse idea, embodied by my local Creative Reuse shop, which takes in craft donations and resells them cheaper than new, which funds the operation and employs folks as well. These kinds of things fly way under the radar—just today I had someone on Mastodon tell me they didn’t think there were any CSA/farm shares in Britain! (Spoiler alert: there are many)

This is the biggest hurdle: we think something doesn’t exist because we haven’t seen it. When the truth is there are all kinds of alternate systems to the one you hate already in existence, often right in your backyard. We’ve been trained by capitalism to think there is only one way of getting our material needs met—by the latest shiny thing that corporations have manufactured while polluting the earth and spending a ton of money on targeted advertising to sell to you. But I guaranteed you, friends, it’s not as cool as the gloves I found at the craft fair that I love so much, I got some for my daughter (this is a BUY category item: local, non-corporate, and kind of falls in the MAKE category as well because it’s hand-crafted):

You can get these by request from Clotho & Frigg (I love their pocket familiars as well!)

THRIFT: I’ve watched with excitement as thrifting has become more normalized, especially as people search for more ethical clothing choices and a way to opt out of fast fashion. I’ve also personally worked toward finding more ethical clothing manufacturers, especially when I’m buying gifts for the kids (although I’ve gotten them thrifted stuff too, including a recent foray into using ThredUp, the online thrift shop that works great for me because plus sizes are hard to find in regular thrift stores). But BuyNothing is really a form of thrifting, as is any free store, the normal thrifting stores in your local area, and anyplace where you’re buying/acquiring used goods: this is key. The world is awash in goods that have already been manufactured, their carbon costs are already spent, but they’re simply in the wrong place—one person no longer has use for them but another would find it exactly what they need. I’ve thought a lot about distribution systems, how we actually move goods, not just the first time, but all the times after that. Imagine a circular economy where goods get used as many times as possible, until their functionality is spent, and then they get either recycled or upcycled. Only as a last resort would we bury something in the ground (and please, never ever burn it—we have enough crap in the air that we’re breathing into our lungs and it’s killing us). Craigslist, Ebay, Facebook Marketplace, BuyNothing, thrift stores (online and off), free stores, clothing swaps can also be seen in this category: all of these are ways to match people with stuff to people who need stuff. And the more we use these systems, the more we encourage them to improve, get more efficient with transport, easier to use, etc.

Start by thinking of the lifecycle of a thing: how much goes into manufacturing it and then the hurdles to getting the most usage out of that carbon burnt to produce it. Even just picturing that lifecycle can help change your mindset: you might be less inclined to buy something new, more inclined to look for alternatives, more likely to clean out the basement and get goods flowing back into the system, where it can be put to use. This isn’t easy, it takes time, and I get that there are limits on all of it.

And yet, this is the beginning of change. And change happens more easily when our old ways are disrupted. Use the disruption of this time as an opportunity to change your habits of consumption.

MAKE: this is by far my most favorite category. I’m a creative person and an engineer, I love to make things, even if most of those things are made with words, I have a deep appreciation for any human-made art. Solarpunk culture is conjoined with DIY culture and maker spaces and arts and crafts of all kinds. How much better is a homemade gift? My friend Jen made this resistance hat for me and it is already one of my treasured things (she shared the pattern if you want to make your own):

I shop at craft fairs and art fairs more often than malls (I never go to the mall tbh). Crafting hobbies can be a whole expensive thing of their own which just means it’s another opportunity to find ways to reuse materials and supplies, ways to network with your local crafters (building community!), ways to have your creations embody the Buyerarchy of Needs and circular economy ideas as well (look for a creative reuse shop near you). Creating is one of those many-benefits things: it’s fundamentally a life-giving act to create, so it benefits the person doing the making; it benefits the person on the receiving end (if it’s a gift) because there’s not a better way to say you care than with the gift of your time; if you’re purchasing someone else’s arts/crafts/hand-made items, you’re likely supporting a small local business, keeping money in your economy and helping build a world where someone can make a living with their art. I’ve long said you have to support the art you want to see in the world (with your dollars), but when you expand that to include crafters making all kinds of items that you might otherwise buy a cheaply manufactured version from Target, you’re starting to see the power of changing your mindset.

And while hand-crafted things may well cost more than their cheap corporate cousins, when you’re saving money by thrifting or swapping or borrowing, you can start to afford to invest in quality items, things that support artisans and local stores.

BUY: I have a whole hierarchy-within-the-hierarchy when it comes to buying things. Because you will have to buy new things (although Trump seems determined to crash the economy by making every new thing more expensive, so much so that even used things like cars are already rising in price). Buying new is another opportunity to find alternatives to the corporate asshattery that is destroying the world.

BUYING HIERARCHY:

Can I buy it from a craft/art fair? Technically “new” but borderline with the MAKE category.
Can I buy it from a local store? This reduces transport costs. For food, it’s the farm share.
Can I buy it from a non-corporate store? My favorite bakeries and food stores are co-ops (find co-ops here). My favorite coffee shop has only two stores. You likely pass small businesses all the time on the way to the Target (I keep picking on Target because they scrubbed their “DEI” so fuck them) Buying online from non-corporate stores also works, but I try to avoid shipping when possible because of carbon costs. Non-corporate stores are also less likely to jerk you around with pricing. While egg prices were soaring at every corporate grocery store, my food co-op could keep prices low because they had relationships with local suppliers.
Can I get it sustainable/fair-trade? There’s no question that sustainably-made goods will cost more. They’re building in the cost that normally gets externalized into pollution that we later breathe into our lungs. But buying sustainable/fair-trade doesn’t just feel good, these companies are often the trailblazers that are creating new manufacturing processes or distribution systems, or even whole economic systems for the people doing the labor. That extra cost is literally helping to fund a sustainable future by growing the industries that lead the way.
Can I buy it direct? If I can’t find what I need anywhere else but Amazon… I will still try to buy it elsewhere. I’ll use Amazon as a (shitty) search engine, see who the manufacturer is, then see if they have an online store. My most recent score on this was a riser for my book display table for in-person events where I will be selling my books. Not something that’s easy to find used (although a good example of something that rarely gets used and I should make sure gets cycled back out into the world when I’m done with it). I found what I needed on Amazon, but the manufacturer also had it on their website store, plus the selection there was much better! Now, the website was clunky, but the cost was 30% less (including shipping), so I actually saved money not buying it on Amazon. And I would never have known if I hadn’t gone looking.
Sometimes convenience trumps everything and you buy from the corporate overlords. Do not beat yourself up about this. If you try even half the things in this post you are radically undermining the system that wants you to mindlessly buy buy buy whatever they’re rolling out next and never question whether it makes your life worse or not.

None of this is about personal austerity or personal morality: it is entirely about disrupting a system that’s killing us. Which is why there are no absolutes. I still buy from Amazon (sometimes). I still send stuff to the landfill (if I must). I buy cheap plastic shit from China (if I absolutely can’t avoid it). This isn’t about perfection, this is about change.

If you start to engage with this idea and try some of these things out, I think you’ll quickly find there are huge benefits to engaging in marketplaces that aren’t soulless corporations out to destroy you and everything you love. That building communities builds resilience. That thrifting and swapping is fun but also makes you less vulnerable to the whims of some demented billionaire who’s decided overnight to tariff everything, including flightless birds.

I started out talking about gardens—how our reflex in this capitalistic hellscape and time of uncertainty is to turn to “self sufficiency” or some fantasy of being independent of the chaos in the world. This is understandable but the exact opposite of what we need to do: which is to lean into community building, understanding where food and other goods come from, seek out and find the circular economy already humming along in our backyard, and build resilience together.

You won’t solve the world’s problems by changing your mindset about consumption.

But you can use the chaos as an opportunity to build something better, right where you are.

SOLAR: How to Get Started and Why You Should - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-04-04T19:57:53.000Z

I put solar on my roof three years ago, and since then, I’ve helped plenty of solar-curious friends figure out the options—there are plenty (and you don’t need a PhD in Environmental Engineering to figure them out).

Solar on Sue’s roof

GET SOLAR TO SAVE THE PLANET

People immediately want to know if solar will save them money, or how long it will take to pay itself back, and I will definitely get to that (and how Trump is going after tax credits), but I need you to understand: nothing in our world prices in the cost of destroying the ecosphere we depend upon for life. There are massive changes that need to be made at every level of our culture—what we eat, how we shop, how things are made, how energy is harvested. Our entire global system is massively unsustainable.

That which is unsustainable will not sustain.

We’re seeing the breakdown already.

We’ll get to the details on solar costs, and I do realize that money-costs are important, but I really hope you’ll consider that the “cost” of how we heat/cool our homes and power our lives is only partially paid by dollars we send to the electric company and mostly paid by pollution we breathe into our lungs and the climate disasters that can strike any one of us at any time.

Just being real about what’s at stake here.

GET SOLAR TO LITERALLY TAKE POWER FROM THE UTILITY COMPANY

Aka, Part 2: Sue the Radical. I cannot overemphasize how radical it is to have a power generator on your roof that harvests free clean energy whenever the sun shines. Most people have no idea how much the power companies do not want you to have solar and any indications otherwise are entirely the laws (passed by Democrats) that have forced them to accept distributed power generation as a fact they have to work around. Which they do—they take that money you send them every month and use it for climate disinformation campaigns (you should absolutely contact your state reps and tell them to pass legislation to stop that). Having solar means directly defunding fossil fuel propaganda. It’s a fantastic bonus.

(I won’t be telling you the goal is to go off-grid because the goal should be to have a community system of green energy that’s resilient for everyone, and the grid plays a key part of that. I will tell you the utility company does not need to be in charge of that. Microgrids are a huge climate solution but we will have to fight a lot to get there and everyone who gets solar moves us one step closer.)

GET SOLAR FOR CLIMATE RESILIENCE

If you can afford a home battery, I highly recommend it, but even without a home battery, having solar gives you power whenever the sun shines. This gets knocks as a disadvantage of solar, but there is no other energy source that automatically replenishes the next day when the sun rises. Grids go out, especially in climate disasters. Gas stations run out of gas, especially in climate disasters. The time when you need power the most is when the highly tenuous system of digging fossil fuels out of the ground, refining them, and transporting them long distances will fail. Your gas backup generator runs as long as you have gas. The solar on your roof runs as long as the sun still rises in the morning. It’s intrinsically more reliable.

Having a backup home battery covers mostly short outages—which are mostly inconveniences, unless you have some critical home medical equipment or it happens to be really fucking cold or really fucking hot, which will definitely happen more often in the years ahead. Even a gas furnace needs electricity to run, but AC will increasingly be not optional for many people. The world is just getting hotter, remember?

If you have an EV, you can (with some effort, for some EVs) connect that to your home heating/cooling system for backup power during longer outages.

For reference, my 13 kWh home battery will hold me for about 24 hours (without heating/cooling). If there’s an outage during a heat event, the solar will power the AC and the battery will hold me overnight. But if there’s an extended outage in the winter due to the polar vortex dropping the temperature to extreme negatives, that home battery won’t last long (and solar is less in the winter, plus there’s likely storm clouds). For that, my 77 kWh Hyundai Ioniq 6 battery hooked up directly to my heat pump (with backup gas furnace) will heat/cool me for days. The Ioniq is one of the few EVs on the market with V2L (Vehicle-to-Load also called bidirectional charging) that lets you basically plug an extension cord into your car and use it as a massive backup power generator. So when you’re shopping for an EV, keep in mind you may want to use it for backup power, so that’s a valuable feature to have (Hyundai EVs are really fantastic for range/charging as well as having V2L; if the Chevy Bolt gets re-released, I’ve heard it will have V2L, but who knows in this crazy environment with Trump attacking everything EV).

IF YOU LIVE IN AN APARTMENT: COMMUNITY SOLAR

People automatically assume if you live in an apartment or condo, you can’t get access to solar.

First, don’t underestimate the power of working together — you could simply ask your landlord whether they would consider getting solar. Or put a petition together and circulate it among the tenants. A climate resilient future is one where we’ve got better-functioning communities, and there’s nothing like a community project to pull people together and give them a reason to get to know one another. And if it fails — if you circulate your petition, ask the landlord, and it goes nowhere — you’ll still have made those connections. You will also become known as the “person who knows about solar” (ask me how I know) and you’ll have broken the silence about climate change and climate disaster resilience, which is a key part of empowering change. But also… the next time there’s a power outage or, worse, a legit disaster strikes close to home, people will remember that you tried to get everyone to go in on solar. And they just might be more open to that now that climate change is on their doorstep.

But, increasingly, community solar is also an option.

Community solar is like farm share, but with a solar field instead of a farm field: basically you “buy in” with a share of the solar farm and you get a portion of the green energy generated. These are fantastic and part of the “microgrid” concept where you communally fund solar, put the panels where they’re best suited to go, and then use it to power the community. These are popping up all over, and the best part is that it doesn’t cost any more than you’re already paying for electricity (in fact you will save money): you’re just paying to be part of the solar farm instead of sending money to the power company. And unlike some “energy credit” systems (or often the “green energy provider” that’s an option through your power company) where you’re just shifting credits around and not really generating new solar energy by installing new solar panels in the community, community solar is the real deal: you’re helping fund new solar energy farms in your local area.

Find out if you have community solar available in your area on Energy Sage. (just enter your zip code and see what community solar farms are available to join)

I don’t get any money or affiliate links or whatever to recommend Energy Sage — they were recommended by the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations and they’re filling a need for a simple portal to help connect people with community solar and solar installers. In a world where it’s hard to know what to trust online, I trust Energy Sage and refer people there often as a first step to getting started with solar.

IF YOU LIVE IN A HOUSE: ROOFTOP SOLAR

There are two important questions to ask before you get too far down the road with solar:

How old is your roof? Generally, you want to install solar on a roof that’s less than 10 years old. If your roof is older, it’s probably best to wait until you replace the roof, and plan for solar then: it’s the ideal time. But you can work with a roof that’s under 10 years. Solar actually protects your roof: you’ll be putting it on the sunny side, which is where most roofs degrade fastest, and today’s solar panels are guaranteed to withstand hail, winds, etc — literally hurricane grade levels are available for y’all in the Southern US.
Is your house shaded a lot? I’m not talking one or two trees, but if you live deep in the forest, you might have a hard time getting sun onto your solar panels. Generally, you’ll only put solar on your south (and maybe west) facing portions of your roofs, but roofs be crazy — mine is broken up by all kinds of fancy architectural things that were Tetris for the solar installers. But they made it work! The only thing you really gotta have is sun.

Note that I didn’t say “oh if you live in a certain latitude, forget it!” The sun literally falls on every part of the Earth. See that red star on the Solar Irradiance map? That’s where I live. Almost in the “do you even have sun there?” category. And yet my solar panels make 75% of my annual energy usage (including 2 EVs, heat pump, induction cooktop): in summer, my solar powers my AC; in spring/fall, I’m sending energy back to the grid; it’s only in winter that most of my energy comes from the utility.

MY PEOPLE: if you are anywhere in any of those reddish areas, get ye some solar! I can’t even imagine how much power you can make. But for the rest of us orange & yellow zoners, trust me when I say you absolutely can make a bunch of power with solar panels where you live. I will say that being covered in snow reduces solar panel effectiveness to zero — but I’ve also found that snow doesn’t last on the panels either. They heat and clear off long before the rest of the roof.

GETTING ESTIMATES FOR ROOFTOP SOLAR

I’ll cover how to pay for the solar in the next section, but first you gotta figure out how much we’re talking about. Roughly, we’re talking $15-$30,000, depending on all kinds of things, including whether you get a home battery. Prices are dropping all the time, every house is unique, and it really depends on how many panels you get (I recommend getting as many as fit on your roof).

Getting solar is like remodeling your kitchen: it’s a big project, costly, you’ll probably take out a loan for it, but in the end, you’ll have a lovely kitchen and you’ll get back some of the cost when you sell your home. In the case of solar, you’ll save on your electric bill and the value of your house goes up, so you’ll recoup much of that when you sell. In either case, you would definitely want to get a couple estimates from trusted contractors to do the work.

This is where I once again recommend Energy Sage:

They have tons of information but they will also connect you with installers. These folks will either take the image of your house off Google Maps or come fly a drone over your house (my installer did both), and use their fancy layout software to place panels on your roof and give you an estimate of how much it will cost (panels, inverter, home battery if you’re getting that, installation, electrical work to connect everything), how much power it will make (based on your location on the irradiance map, varying over the year), and usually will have financing deals as well.

Early on, there were a lot of scammers out there, taking advantage of well-meaning people who didn’t know how to get started. There are still scammers, but that’s what Energy Sage helps with — I won’t say they perfectly vet every installer, but they do have some minimum requirements. And you gotta use your common sense — if someone’s hard core selling you, or wants to sign you up for things you don’t understand, that’s a red flag.

Be warned, it is true that electricians are in super high demand and it may take time to get estimates and installation done: my project took about 10 months but that was during supply chain problems in 2021-2022. Then again, we now have an insane clown in the White House imposing tariffs on penguins and crashing the stock market, so you know… plan ahead. Might take a while to fight through the nonsense. But I’d also grab that 30% clean energy tax credit before Trump gets around to eliminating it.

NOTE TO DIYers: It is absolutely possible to DIY your own solar… if you are a professional electrician. And willing/able to navigate the permitting and physically willing to climb on your own roof. Even then, you’ll need help (most likely). I do know DIYers and they’re amazing, so I’m not gonna say it’s not possible. You will definitely save money because a lot of the cost is in installation and electrical work. But it is some major work with high levels of expertise and some physical risks, and most folks are better off paying experts to do it.

NOTE ON CO-OPS: I highly recommend you check out Solar United Neighbors and get on their mailing list–they do advocacy and also run solar co-ops, which means they organize a bunch of people in a local area that are interested in getting solar and vet installers and negotiate lower prices. It’s hella cool and I’m bummed they weren’t running a co-op when I wanted to get my solar. Otherwise, I would have totally been in.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON ESTIMATES: when you’re getting estimates, tell the installers whether you want a home battery for backup, and whether you get a battery or not, you want to be able to operate on solar during an outage. Regulations vary by state and even municipality, but in general, you should be able to set up a system where you can disconnect from the grid during an outage and operate solely on solar (this is for safety reasons, so you’re not sending power to the grid while they’re trying to fix it). My Tesla home battery (I know I know, I hate him too, but it was the only option in the supply chain crunch; now I would 100% get a GM home battery system that you can plug your EV into) is integrated with the inverter (the thing that converts the solar DC to AC power your house uses—everyone will have an inverter as part of the package), and the battery/inverter has the ability to automatically disconnect from the grid and run on battery/solar during an outage. It also manages the minute-to-minute fluctuations of energy between solar, grid, (battery optional) and your home.

One more tiny sidebar: When I had the electrical work done for the solar, I also had them set up a circuit box so I could have a “fast” (really medium slow) charger in my garage for my EV. I wish I had also done the wiring for my induction cooktop that I got later. It’s always better to get all electrical work done at the same time, if you can (see: shortage of electricians).

HOW TO PAY FOR ROOFTOP SOLAR

Beyond the non-monetary benefits of a cleaner world, defunding fossil fuel propaganda, and climate resilience, solar has monetary cost considerations most people don’t think about:

reduced electric and gas bills: If you get a heat pump and run it off your solar, most of your heating/cooling energy needs could be covered by free energy from the sun. And that includes gasoline bills too, if you have EVs.
proofing against rate increases: solar panels last for 30+ years (some are 45 years old and going strong with only minimal losses in efficiency). Do you think perhaps energy prices might have some volatility over that time? My power company is raising rates this summer. Most people try to calculate a return-on-investment of their solar panels based on today’s energy prices, but those are guaranteed to be too low. Energy prices go up and down but mostly up — especially as climate change continues wreck havoc on the world. Meanwhile, you will be sitting pretty in your solar house with guaranteed power coming in whenever the sun rises. Whatever payback time you calculate based on current energy rates (let’s say 5 years), you’re essentially saying “and I get free energy after that for 25+ years during the hellscape climate change that will be happening during that time.” And that’s a hell of a deal.
your house value will increase with solar: this is a hard one to put a number on, and real estate markets are volatile and going to get worse with climate change, but I feel very comfortable saying that a house that already has solar installed is one people will pay more for. Not only do they avoid all the hassle you’re going through right now to install it, they get all the benefits, and those go way beyond the reduction in their electric bill. Those non-monetary benefits above? They will have a monetary value when you sell your house. Zillow says solar homes sell for about 4% more — which can easily cover the cost of your system. This is one reason I tell people not to worry about whether they will be moving—if you move, you actually will get paid back sooner on your investment in solar.
tax credits, SRECs, net metering: the main incentive out there for solar came through Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (which was criminally unappreciated), which gives 30% tax credits on solar installation (the whole thing). But my state also has SRECs, a complicated mostly-shenanigan system that sells my solar credits to fossil fuel companies wanting offsets, but it does put about $100 a quarter in my checking account (I donate it to Go Sun to help low-income folks get solar because fuck the fossil fuel industry). And then there’s net metering, which is when you send solar power back to the grid and the power company has to give you credits which you can spend later (basically you can use the grid like a giant battery, which is how the grid actually functions anyway). Make sure your state has net metering because Republicans are trying to kill that too. Upshot: there are lots of smaller benefits, and tax credits are not small—get those while you can.

THE THREE WAYS TO PAY

1 – Pay Up Front or Take Out A Loan (Recommended): the kitchen remodel analogy works well here — you would likely pay up front for that or maybe take out a home-improvement loan. Different folks will have access to different kinds of credit, but secondary loans through your mortgage company are common. Solar installers also pair with financing companies, so they’ll usually offer you some kind of financing as well, so you can compare financing deals on your estimates as well as the work itself. (You do not have to take their financing to get them to do the work — we paid up front for ours, but I realize not everyone can do that).

2 – Leasing (Not Recommended but it’s an option): this is where a company installs the solar panels for no money up front and then leases them to you, sort of like a car, except they get the car back and they’re not gonna come repossess your panels. It’s more like leasing your phone from the phone company: you don’t have to pay up front for that $500 phone or whatever but then you pay monthly forever. It’s a good deal for the phone company, bad deal for you, but takes advantage of people who don’t have access to capital or financing but want the thing, in this case, solar. This has the added disadvantage of encumbering future owners of your house with this solar leasing arrangement, which they may not like. I might pay more for a solar house but not so much for one with a leasing agreement. No one would lease a kitchen remodel and expect the next owner to keep making the payments, but that’s somehow the situation with solar leasing. They are getting power out of it, so it’s a complicated thing. Which is why I don’t say it’s recommended, but it’s better than option #3.

3 – Purchase Power Agreements (Not Recommended): this is where a company with a lot of capital wants to install solar on your roof and then sell the power back to you at “a lower rate” GTFO WITH THAT. Sorry, I have strong feelings about this option as you may have noticed from the entirety of this blog post. This is companies snatching up the free tax credits and also locking you into a perpetual Netflix-for-energy situation where you will pay forever at the rates they choose. Only they’re getting the energy for free. It’s like the power company only worse. Often it is the power company actually being worse. So yeah. I don’t recommend this.

There could be variations on these themes where the fine print is better or worse — be careful, read the fine print, and reach out if you’ve got questions. In the comments is great (if you’re willing) because then other people can benefit from the discussion.

SIDEBAR FOR LOW-INCOME FOLKS: There were some really great programs for low-income folks to get 100% rebates on some solar programs under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, but I pretty much expect that to all go away. However, if you’re in a blue state, you may still have some programs available. Be careful of the fine print, it might be leasing not ownership, but maybe that’s acceptable. Hopefully the info I’m providing here will help, but feel free to reach out if you need help navigating and I can try to parse it.

That’s it. Whew that’s a wall-o-text and one I’ve been wanting to write up for a long time. Thanks to everyone who asked along the way for help navigating their solar questions—that helped to fill out my knowledge about how this works in different situations.

UPSHOT: solar is very do-able for a lot of people, way more than think so. More importantly, it’s necessary if we’re to have any chance with this runaway climate change the idiots in charge are trying to super-charge with things like drilling for oil we don’t need in national parks that we desperately do.

I do lots of different things to try to work for a better world — my solarpunk stories, of course, but I do a lot of activism and advocacy, and a big part of that has been simply doing it myself so I gain first-hand experience and can help others do the same.

As I told the young activists who came to my house for a film shoot: “I don’t tell stories about climate change; I tell stories about how we have to change.”

And that’s the crux: all of this is change, and that can be hard, especially when we’re not sure about the details or have people we trust to show the way. I try hard to be someone people can trust to show the way, to help them get started. That’s all most folks need.

BONUS CONTENT

PennEnvironment came to my house and filmed all my clean energy stuff and let me talk about my solarpunk books! Check out their cool video.

PennEnvironment Clean Energy video (YouTube, PennEnvironment page)

Me in front of my new native garden holding the solarpunk anthology Metamorphosis with my story in it