Solar architecture and the sufficiency imperative

Abstract

It is hard to assess the pace and prospects of the solar revolution and the just energy transition. In architecture solar energy continues to be seen as a salve, a convenient and effective response to the forces – social, regulatory, economic – pushing for more and more efficient energy use in buildings. Photovoltaics solve everyone's problem: the building's form and program do not change dramatically, the renewable industry is furthered in its boom, savings in energy bills follow. Occupancy of the building goes on more or less as before.

Yet the application of solar panels to a building, not to mention the prospect for more and more expansive solar farms, reproduces the extractive model of fossil fuels. Rare earth materials need to be mined and shipped. The manufacturing process is toxic. The beneficiaries tend to be those who can already afford to save and conserve. The clean are getting cleaner, while those struggling with energy supply are less frequently benefited. The panels need to be replaced relatively frequently, yoking economies to resource dependencies sure to be exacerbated as electricity demand swells. Amidst the broad discourse around the just energy transition, photovoltaic solar energy is itself most likely transitional, contingent and conditional.

The analysis of architecture provides a few windows on to the nuances and challenges of this next phase of the just energy transition – on how we can collectively think differently around resources and their provision in our buildings, as a site for both collectivization and social transformation.