How would nature design our energy system?

In the first week of the Living Grid Explorer, we asked what human systems can learn from the rest of life on Earth. Now, in week two, we’re asking how nature would redesign our alien energy system for life on Earth.

It’s as if our human energy system were designed for life on another planet. It sticks out like a sore thumb from the energy system that’s evolved here over the last 3.8 billion years of life. Rather than cycle solar energy through a closed-loop, cooperative system — as other life forms do around here — our linear, centralised grid releases energy into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, wasting it rather than recapturing it. If this mismatch is the root cause of climate change then, to tackle it effectively, we must find ways to reintegrate our human energy system with this wider, living energy system.

Join us to find out what it would take to make our alien energy system part and parcel of nature again. How would nature design it? Please share your ideas.

This article was first published on the Futures Centre on 3 May 2017.