As opposed to its dystopian cousin cyberpunk, solarpunk is about speculating on a future in which humans and nature are able to thrive together. It is a cultural force that finds its potency in its collective basis. Jay Springett calls it a container for ideas — a conceptual bricolage of possible options for the future.

According to Jay, solarpunk is less about fixation on utopia than finding a path through the “disaster season” that lies ahead en route to a better world.

As a basis for this sustainable future, solarpunk imagines economies separated from fossil fuels. In the solarpunk vision, the solar energy revolution, in tandem with known strategies for the sustainable production and use of food and resources, drives self-determined living.

An AI-generated image showing a futuristic city in a green setting.
Designed by Freepik

Solarpunk is not about creating an image that “looks cool,” says Jay. Rather, it is imagining what the future should look like if we do the things we need to do for the survival of humans and natural systems. Going a step further, it is also acting to manifest this, using strategies — some decidedly low-tech — that we already have.

Jay Springett
Courtesy of Jay Springett

Jay’s professional life is based on consulting to a variety of entities (often media-related) about the design and implementation of techno-social systems. He describes his work as running “worlds” — the latter being difficult to define by Jay’s own admission, but akin to territories of imagination.

His involvement in the solarpunk movement and his immersion in its development on digital platforms helped steer him toward this interest in worlds.

The price of solar panels has dropped significantly. Here, they harvest energy on a barn roof.

The solarpunk world, he says, grew in part from the cultural stasis of recycled versions of the future that Western mass media currently perpetuates. We see this in blockbuster films based on superhero characters from the past, he says. In cultural terms, suggests Jay, we have run out of future.

A community garden in Melbourne, Australia.

Because the ingredients of a solarpunk future (for example, community food forests, urban agriculture, rainwater tanks, greenhouses, walkable neighbourhoods, and of course, solar panels) are within our grasp, they allow for a sense of optimism and agency about creating a future that we really need, by ourselves.

A rainwater harvesting tank.

Is Jay’s vision of the future essentially a retrofit of the present? In part, perhaps it is. But he also points to an evolution in the design mindset beyond the appetite for singular architectural objects towards spatial strategies deeply integrated with landscape. It sounds a lot like a path to regenerative development.

In the episode, Jay discusses permaculture and keyline design as tangible strategies for a solarpunk future, with long-term consideration of landscape hydrology. Greening desert regions using keyline design is possible now, he points out. In the future, he suggests, natural landscapes could well be environments curated by people for mutual benefit.

A hospital complex sits beside a wheat field in Germany.

With his solarpunk vision, Jay looks ahead not with hope but with agency. “[A]s soon as we realise that we have agency over the problem, then we should be able to do the work,” he says. “I think that, at its core, is what solarpunk is about […] inspiring people to do the work,” he adds.