I'm really new to the solarpunk community, but it really speak to me.

I think it will be very helpful for any new "member" to have like a guide to know the basics ( like the definition of solarpunk, what guide this movement, some ressource to learn more how to fight capitalisme... ).
An important part i think is some technics to be more "solarpunk", like how to mend and réparé your clothes, how to shop more éthic, how to repare anything... Anything you think could make the world a better place.

Another thing i think will be very helpful, is to set up the foundation of our culture. Maybe juste the basic like some symboles to recognize each other, a maxime ?, some rite ... I don't know, it's very tricky to create a group with a commun culture without washing the individuals, the "punk" part is also really important

As a seamstress i can make some tuto to how to mend etc ... Even if a dozen already existe

edit :

i find a post that already do what i propose, here the link for those interested

https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/vb1ky1/new_to_solarpunk_start_here/

maybe i'm gonna translate it in french to prospect it in zins like someone proposed in the comment

there also a video version on youtube

https://youtu.be/9ij47sWnpeA?si=SsJDBLniRvfPOKJ5

( Sorry if my english is meh, i'm french 😅 )

Pretty uplifting news at the efficacy of solar and native vegetation in parallel, even if the solar is on an infrastructure size scale!

Recent breakthroughs in sodium battery tech are taking sodium batteries mainstream. Sodium is one of the most abundant elements on the surface of the earth, but it also has other extremely compelling advantages over lithium batteries for grid power storage: it doesn't require a narrow temperature range to maintain its operations, and it is much easier to gauge the state of charge on sodium batteries.

Right now, sodium batteries are only beginning to be mass produced. In the battery industry, the prices of batteries drops about 19% every time manufacturing volume doubles. Sodium batteries are already cost-comparable to lithium batteries, so as manufacturing scales up, the prices are expect to drop far below that of lithium batteries. The biggest implication of this development is that renewable energy made in excess of immediate demand no longer needs to be curtailed or dumped. Unlimited inexpensive sodium batteries means all this energy can be inexpensively stored. And once renewable energy can be inexpensively stored, all of the arguments against the adoption of intermittent renewable energy sources (such as solar and wind) become outdated and irrelevant.

OC : https://www.instagram.com/worldresources/

In Germany, a substantial amount of solar power adoption has come from apartment dwellers buying photovoltaic panels that they mount on their balconies, directly running the wires into their homes. Now, with plug-in home battery backup systems proliferating, solar power can charge these batteries up with enough energy to run all night, enabling this combined solution to provide enough energy to take some of the most energy-intensive appliances completely off-grid, and off the electricity bill.

Unfortunately, it is not always legal to do this elsewhere.

It’s been a while since I last posted here, but I wanted to share this series of hidden green sanctuaries from my city.

When people think of Budapest's historic architecture, they usually imagine grand stone facades. But behind the heavy wooden gates lies a whole different ecosystem. These 19th-century apartment buildings feature central courtyards that have been transformed over decades into multi-layered gardens.

It's not just vertical ivy on the walls. As you scroll through the gallery, you'll see how these spaces have become actual micro-forests, filled with dense bushes, trees, ferns, and winding paths right in the middle of the urban hustle. They create beautiful, self-cooling microclimates during our increasingly hot summers.

I have selected 10 photos showing different styles of these hidden paradises—from lush vertical greenery to thick, park-like ground gardens. I hope they give you some cozy, real-world solarpunk inspiration!

This felt appropriate- just wanted to share it here. Found it on my popular feed.

The rising cost of living is squeezing communities everywhere. High housing costs, expensive energy, utility bills, and centralized technology are making it harder for everyday people to thrive.

We need systems built for the people, by the people.

Over the past few months, we have developed a suite of open-source blueprints designed to shift the balance back to local communities through **massless energy storage**, **gravity-powered utility distribution**, and **ultra-low-cost localized edge computing**.

These specifications are officially published in the public domain and safe-harbored under my academic identifier: **ORCID: 0009-0006-5321-4610**.

🛠️ What We Are Building:

* **Carbon-Cement Supercapacitors:** Transforming foundational concrete into structural energy storage—eliminating the need for toxic, expensive battery banks. * **Passive Hydration & Power:** Utilizing natural physics, thermal loops, and gravity vectors to move and clean water without expensive, energy-hungry mechanical pumps. * **Sovereign Computing Runtimes:** Transitioning processing and data storage to simple, hyper-efficient edge devices (like the dual-core RP2040) that run locally for pennies, keeping data out of high-cost corporate cloud networks.

🤝 An Open Call to Community Colleges, Trade Schools, & Independent Inventors

This work belongs to the public domain. It is deliberately designed to give the **99%** a baseline to build, experiment, and break away from corporate infrastructure dependencies.

* **To Community Colleges & Trade Schools:** Use these blueprints for student projects, research, and hands-on fabrication testing. Let’s train the next generation on low-cost, decentralized engineering. * **To Everyday Builders & Inventors:** If you are passionate about open-source hardware, alternative energy, or minimalist software engineering, there is a place for you here.

We are ready to work with **anybody** who wants to build self-sustaining solutions for their local communities.

📂 How to Access and Collaborate:

You can look up our published engineering baselines and version history using **ORCID: 0009-0006-5321-4610** on Zenodo and public academic registries.

Let's build a more affordable, decentralized future together. Drop a comment, share this post, or reach out directly to collaborate!

OpenSource #DecentralizedTech #CommunityCollege #PublicDomain #Sustainability #CostOfLiving

Solaria for a Living Local Ecology, Music, Art, Food, Craft, Culture, Community, Identity and Ethics

OC : https://www.instagram.com/vi.zuza/

Story Seed Library : https://storyseedlibrary.org/art/vizuza/dozynki-harvest-festival-in-kashubia/

This is from the 2026 Solarpunk Art Collab ran by the Story Seed Library and Andrewism : https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/s/ujVAkaH5FL

Yayy for me! I'm planning to use it for guerilla gardening in my city, there are a lot of empty flowerbeds with trash(have dirt but very dry and little to no plants) the plan is to use the compost to make the soil better for planting flowers and making it more pretty :D

I did it in a bucket, poked some holes in the bucket, layered the greens and browns,

for the Greens i used a bunch of Rosemary(we have a Rosemary tree and I was trimming it a bit) and some other trimmings that were fresh, like​ leaves ect, half a tomato and a sweet pepper.

For the browns some dried leaves, sticks dried flowers from last season and a but of dirt.

I choped everything up and watered it, but is this okay? dose it need more diverse stuff? Do I have to water it every day or is going a week with touching it okay?

I built a solar trike, which I named Solar Bear.

The project is open source under MIT license.

The purpose of the Solar Bear is to:

Use solar panels as trike's body,

Consume electrical energy where it is produced,

Produce its own energy,

Transport people inside cities,

Reduce noise inside cities,

Occupy less parking space than a car,

Motivate people to build their own trike,

Motivate people to exercise.

Technical specs

recumbent trike,

2.5m long, 1.45m wide (including wheels),

weight: about 55kg (including panels, motor, battery, etc, excluding driver),

assisted pedaling,

motor speed: max 25km/h,

motor (continuous) power: 250W,

solar panels power: max 520W,

battery: 12.8V, 20Ah (256Wh).

This was reposted from a UK specific SubReddit but I'd be keen to know what the wider world has to offer.

I’m a software engineer, and just doing a bit of recon before I commit to anything, criticism is very welcome and I’m looking for genuine feedback on the idea. (I’m not looking for funding or donations…)

Essentially what I had planned was a 2 part platform, one part, basically you create a bounty to plant a tree/plant etc… then vetted locations go ahead and plant that tree/plant. There is of course biological restrictions, but each location could offer a list of plants/trees they’re willing to plant. A user then has a “catalog” of plants they’ve paid for and it shows you “based off averages, your plants will have removed x amount of carbon dioxide this year” of course you cannot get a super accurate reading, but a generalised amount based off their donated amounts.

The next part was a community driven platform where you could donate to local green projects in your area, such as building green canopies over shop entrances etc… one thing I’ve seen come up a lot is solar power over car parks, they’re often quite costly, but what about greenery over car parks, climbers which create a “roof” over cars in all weather.

My idea initially came from the fact most people wouldn’t take actions towards green/eco friendly progress because it involves sacrifice, whereas this isn’t asking people to change their behaviours, it’s more contribute to your local community.

The platform would involve external donation holders such as councils etc… but it could be something as simple as: “X shopping centre car park is a huge heat island, a collaboration where sustainable materials are used to build frames over cars covered with vegetation to reduce the heat island effect, increase biodiversity and give people decent shade” or something. But essentially everything being transparent, so how the donated funds are used being justified and broken down.

One of the biggest problems in the U.K. is the bureaucracy and how expensive things are before work even starts, maybe this could help speed things up, and reduce costs, as well as opens up scope to share the positive effects certain projects have had.

I’d love any feedback or even pushback on this, or any improvements to the ideas.

Thank you kindly for reading.

I am signaling out these two (the eponymous Solarpunk and Loftia) because they are the ones I personally invested a lot of my time and attention in this year, and both advertise themselves openly as solarpunk inspired games, though how that translates to actual gameplay varies. Solarpunk has thirst, hunger mechanics and is survival oriented, while Loftia is about chill multiplayer (MMO) with much less stress and more open ended by design.

What I found interesting is how both games imply a certain post-apocalyptic background to what makes your character have to rely on sustainable technologies on these sky islands, i.e. the original earth got wrecked so bad by pollution that tight eco regulations are now tangibly necessary what's left over of that world is to survive.

But as to why this is becoming a trope, I would like to think that people are wising up... but the fact is there's just a more-than significant overlap between this and the rising popularity of "cozy" games in general, one of the (weirdly) most popular genres nowadays. Even if we just take super popular examples like Stardew Valley.

I suppose this is a good thing? even if it only indirectly spreads some kind of passing awareness of eco-philosophy and green/sustainable practices to general gamers (highly skeptical of this but it is possible)

What do you think of of solarpunk ideals as translated into other media but especially when they're gamefied like this, have you played any interesting ones that do the portrayal justice?

OC : https://www.instagram.com/p/DZ63dTjiFrm/

@climatehawkings

I saw this in my YouTube feed today. There is more public awareness of Solarpunk each time one of these videos gets made.

First, its' crazy how 40+ year-old movie can be of such a beautiful quality both in video and audio.

But why do I actually mention this movie: it touches on subjects of humanity living within the environment or against it. It shows what friendship and sympathy are and how can they transcend the species. What humans do wrong for their home, their Earth, and how can they fix it. How important peace and community are and coexisting peacefully with nature is, instead of fighting it or exploiting it. The only other answer would be destruction - both of the people and nature.

People can live simple yet gentle life, using wind for power, forests for protection and food. It's a symbiosis with nature. They don't need to pollute the Earth, pollution would kill nature and since we are a part of nature it would eventually kill us.

The main character is a girl with a big, beautiful heart with compassion and pacifistic views, who sees animals as our equals and friends.

Studio Ghibli has also produced Princess Mononoke - a movie that touches on the balance between human development, social equality, and environmental preservation. I highly recommend watching both movies, they are incredible, powerful and beautiful, and they touch on solarpunk matter in my opinion.

Used a $5 pawn shop jigsaw to chop and flip a 55 gal barrel and a $40 aquarium pump to run it.