REGENERATIVE ENERGY COMMUNITIES
Regenerative Energy Communities work on embodied and joyful experiences for engaging with energy transitions through reciprocity and care. Experimenting with microenergy projects that nurture and care for soil ecosystems. Offering counter approaches to renewables that resist the reproduction of colonial-capitalist ecologies. On this site we share a range of regenerative resources created by our team and collaborators. Welcome!
OPEN LABS & WORKSHOPS
We support community workshops and organise events. Reclaiming the imaginaries of renewable energy through making, discussion and pleasurable practices. Always working towards forms of trans-local solidarity with other regenerative energy communities. Visit our workshops archive for more on this.
COMMUNITY PROTOTYPES
We work on situated micro and meso regenerative energy prototypes because questions of scale are critical in energy infrastructure to avoid creating new universalities that discard people and the earth. Its an approach of working locally to consider energy transitions and climate catastrophe, but whilst being aware that working on local regenerative energy practice doesn't automatically halt the greenwashing and the violence of military-green-technology- energy nexus.
The project involves prototyping experiments aimed at exploring what forms regenerative energy alternatives might take. These include creative, community-inspired experiments with a series of low-cost, open-source microgeneration energy sources that can be readily reproduced and inspire further new perspectives on energy alternatives.
From wind turbines grown from mycelium to making electricity from soil microbes and foraging for regenerative organic materials. Check out our prototyping page for documentation so you can make your own regenerative prototypes that will work in your growing setting.
HUMUSPUNK DEMOS
It’s hard to imagine the next decade, let alone the next 100 years, amidst the backdrop of rising violence, wars, and the intensification of mining for rare earth minerals to support the so-called green transition. Our exhibitions, demos and screenings propose a future-we-need for energy.
REC TALKS + AUDIO
Talks, interviews and discussions on concepts of regenerative design, sustainable agriculture, alternative energy systems and bio-friendly technologies.
ENERGY TRANSITIONS
We organize hyper local gatherings with farmers, students, residents, feminist engineers, decolonial activists, artists and poets. Situating discussions of energy transitions to fight the dominance of renewable imaginaries by fossil fuel, state powers and big tech industries.
REGENERATIVE MEDIA
We also work on degoogle-ized Regenerative Energy Infrastructure. varia collective collaborated with us to setup a non-extractive, low energy regenerative media interface. Visit our REC x XMPP live feed for past and present photos from our ongoing work.
HOW DOES SOIL PROTOTYPE PUBLICATIONS?
Emerging imaginations of energy transition and net-zero remain powerfully attached to the individual and the image of business as usual - despite the huge transformations of climate crisis. What if we start with soil? How can we imagine infrastructures otherwise and design practices that can flip paradigms, embrace grimy creativity and ferment revolt. How does soil prototype communities? How does soil prototype regenerative queer imaginaries? Critiques of technology and digitalization? Exhaustion? Creative and innovative uses of technology? Humuspunk? Alternative histories of energy? Stories of damage? Overwhelming refusal and unknowing? Read more from us in our collected writings on prototyping, thoughts in the making, collaborations and other moments and works in progress!
ENERGY FARMING
REC was partly located within the Brände Udde farm site hosted by VXO Farmlab, who describes themselves as: "a collective experimental urban farm space that explores local food economies, resilient food networks and regenerative cultural flourishings." VXO Farmlab follows in the footsteps of earlier active engagement with the Brände Udde site, especially the work of The Feminist Farmers and also the ongoing work of The Dirt.
ENERGIZE & ORGANIZE
REC was supported for three years by a Swedish Energy Agency grant but builds on much work before, during, and, after with companions and collaborators. This site hosts resources, prototypes, and an open lab library alongside documentation of events, actions, exhibitions and workshops. We are now working in distributed ways and you are welcome to contact us if you want support in your locality.
