Seen from the air, thousands of mirrors stand in rings in the Nevada desert, all aimed at one central tower whose receiver glows white with concentrated sunlight.
Energy and natural resources

Green Initiative

Every light switch is connected to a mine, a pipeline or the wind. The Green Initiative follows the energy, and the materials, all the way back.

Bureau of Land Management Nevada

Humanity runs on energy and materials: more than a hundred billion tonnes of stuff dug, grown and pumped out of the planet every year, and a power system that still burns fossil fuels for most of its energy. The Green Initiative explains where this comes from, what it costs the planet, and where engineering can change the equation, including our own open research into a new kind of wind power.

The questions we work on

  • Energy sources. How coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar really compare over their whole life, in emissions, safety and land. Read the energy sources explainer.
  • Population, consumption and resources. How the number of people, how much each of us uses and the technology that meets that demand add up to our footprint on one planet: what islands teach about limits, why education and voluntary family planning matter, why every home needs light, space and green, and how food can be produced with less land and no suffering. Read the population and resources explainer.
  • The Fan Wall. Can a modular wall of thousands of small fans, the size of the ones that cool a computer, make useful electricity on rooftops and in cities? Our open research programme, with the maths and the honest numbers. Read about the Fan Wall.
  • The alternatives, one by one. An in-depth, sourced article for each idea on the radar below, written with the same honesty as the Fan Wall: how it works, what limits it, what real projects have measured, what it costs against rooftop solar, and what a working prototype would need. Solar roofs that also make heat, agrivoltaics, floating solar, tidal stream, wave energy, small and in-pipe hydro, sand and heat batteries, ground-source heat pumps, waste heat, energy kites and demand flexibility.
The station's solar arrays against Earth's horizon.
The International Space Station has run on sunlight for a quarter of a century. Credit: NASA

Where the planet meets the price tag

The cheapest electricity ever produced now comes from new wind and solar farms in much of the world, and the price of batteries has collapsed. What slows the change is rarely the technology: it is grids, permits, finance and habit. That is the space where Applying Capitalism to Science matters most. A clean solution that is also the cheapest one does not need persuading.

The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones.

A vast circle of mirrors in green Andalusian farmland, all tilted towards a central tower whose top glows white with reflected sunlight.
Gemasolar, near Seville in Spain: 2,650 mirrors aim sunlight at the receiver on the central tower, and tanks of molten salt store enough heat to keep generating for up to 15 hours without sun (SENER). Photo: kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0

Proven solutions

The change is already happening, and it can be measured.

  • Clean grids exist. Fossil fuels made 84 percent of Denmark’s electricity in 2000 and 11 percent in 2024; Uruguay built its wind power in less than a decade; Kenya makes almost half its electricity from the heat of the Rift Valley (Our World in Data). See grids that already changed.
  • The price collapsed. A solar module costs 99.8 percent less than in 1975, and lithium-ion battery cells more than 99 percent less than in 1991 (Our World in Data; Ritchie). See the learning curve.
  • Education and choice work. In Bangladesh, where health workers brought family planning to women’s homes and stipends kept girls in secondary school, the average family went from almost seven children to about two, by choice (World Bank).
  • Resources can be saved and restored. South Korea now recycles about 95 percent of its food waste, the ozone layer is on track to heal after the world phased out the chemicals that damaged it, and farmers in Niger have regrown about 200 million trees. See proven solutions for population and resources.

Organisations doing this work

Non-profit organisations such as SolarAid, Solar Sister, Practical Action, CAMFED, Room to Read and WRAP work on these problems every day and publish their results. What each one does is described on the energy sources and population and resources pages. Look at their work and, if it convinces you, give to them directly. The Local Solar System Foundation has no affiliation with any of them and receives nothing from them; please check each organisation’s own reports before you give.

Ideas wanted

The Fan Wall is one idea. We want many more. Solar roofs that also make heat, panels over farms and reservoirs, heat stored in sand, energy recovered from water mains and sewers, kites that reach stronger winds, and smarter timing of the power we already make: each has real physics behind it and a hard limit it has to respect. The radar below compares twelve of them against the benchmark every idea has to beat, rooftop solar, and each one links to its own in-depth article. The energy sources explainer explains each direction and what a strong idea brief contains.

From idea to pitch: the working-model rule

Some members of the Foundation may have contacts who could hear a pitch for a strong energy idea. To be pitched, an idea needs a working, real-life model that actually produces power, with its output measured on an instrument, not claimed. Paper ideas are welcome too: if the physics and the numbers are solid, we can publish them here on the website. But raising capital without a working model is very difficult, and nothing here is a promise of funding, returns or introductions. Send us your idea.

How you can help

  • Understand your own energy. Read your electricity bill: how much do you use, and where does your supplier’s power come from? Many suppliers let you choose renewable power.
  • Cut the waste first. Insulation, draught-proofing, efficient appliances and LED bulbs are the cheapest energy of all.
  • Repair, reuse, borrow. The greenest product is the one that lasts; the second greenest is the one that is shared.
  • Support local energy. Community solar and wind projects, and rooftop panels on schools and town halls, keep money and power local. Ask your council about them.
  • Bring an idea. Engineers, makers and students can propose a better way to make, store or save energy through the contribution form, or help design and test the Fan Wall.
  • Help the research. Everyone can help review, translate and share through the contribution board.