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A Tour of Place-Based Solar Futures

Every community is different, even in the future. When speculating about how we might soon power our world with solar energy, it’s helpful to situate those visions in real places. Cities and countries each have unique histories, geography, and needs. Here are a few examples of short stories that imagine the solar futures of specific locales. How might they inspire the setting for YOUR story?

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Florida — “Sunshine State” by Adam Flynn and Andrew Dana Hudson in Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction

Jefferson met her at the airport, and they rode out of the city, past a stretch of neon-lit nightclubs. Revelers with mosquito nets over their skimpy club gear stood outside vaping and waiting to get in. Jefferson bemoaned the passing of old cowboy-themed swing bars from his misspent youth. They continued west until the “nuisance flooding ahead” signs became more insistent. Jeff sent the car back, and they continued on in anairboat he’d parked nearby. A jerry-rigged, patched-over beast from the aughts, Jefferson had ripped out the old combustion engine and wired in something Tesla, charged it from a cow-sized solar balloon.

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Phoenix, Arizona — “For the Snake of Power” by Brenda Cooper in The Weight of Light (illustration by Laura Wentzel)

She reached the break and stopped under it, staring up. The snake undulated throughout the city, sometimes only 20 feet above the canals and sometimes the height of a tall building, the design part art and all function. The taller loops reached for sun that buildings or bridges would block. This break was near where a segment began to rise. Three supports had come down. Solar scales had shattered on the pathway and, almost certainly, into nearby backyards. A few still dangled, askew, edges connected to the wire scaffolding that managed the panel’s tilt.

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Detroit, Michigan — “Under the Grid” by Andrew Dana Hudson in The Weight of Light (illustration by Michael Duah)

Detroit was a jungle of contradictions. Skinny, single-lot towers stood beside century-old two-storys. The skyspace of these houses crowded with leafy trellises and tubes of aeroponic crops, dangling from the crisscross Grid 100 meters above. The Grid was supported by redwood-thick struts pushing out of the street. These always seemed a bit alien to Ingrid, with uncanny curves drawn by powerful math instead of human hands. They were colossal, yet made mundane by the rows of concert posters that covered the first few meters and the riot of graffiti that snaked up the rest. Bikes wheeled in the roundabouts the Grid had created in this once car-dominated city.

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Chicago, Illinois — “Efficiency” by Paolo Bacigalupi in Cities of Light (illustration by Venkatesh Lakshmi Narayanan)

Down below, pedestrians are barely discernible dots on the pavement. The storm of two nights before has passed, leaving a foot of snow. The city is bright and clear and brilliantly white, hard architectural edges softened, dirty pavement muffled. James can see all the way down to south Chicago, where he grew up. Can see the peekings of dark-panel solar cells already being cleared of snow, everyone eager to harvest the sun while it’s shining. Panels everywhere, coming clear now. The panel arrays fill the redesigned streets and cover the rooftops. A few of the little electric HoodBuses that serve the blocks are also moving, using the juice that’s finally flowing in from their minigrids.

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Portland, Oregon — “Solarshades” by ADH in Cities of Light (illustration by Sebastián Sifuentes)

On cloud-out days, when that listless Pacific smother hung low over Portland, and the house batteries chirped their plaintive 10-percent forebodings—the grid no help at all—Kismet clambered onto the roof to see the lit-up glitter of the Clackamas County line: a trash-strewn no-man’s land cutting through brownfields, fallow forests, and cemeteries. A little crack in the law that neither Happy Valley nor Pleasant Valley wanted to deal with.

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San Juan, Puerto Rico — “Things That Bend, But Don’t Break” by SB Divya in Cities of Light (illustration by Regan Rosburg)

La Flor de Maga, the massive wind-turbine sculpture, towered over San Juan, its giant red petals wide open and spinning in the ocean breeze. Tanama ran past the gawking tourists at its base. She crossed the bridge to the network of floating houseboats and leapt from dock to dock until she arrived home.

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Melbourne, Australia — “The Lighthouse Keeper” by ADH in Energy Overlays

Bast harrumphed and started walking down Peel to Chapel. Here people lounged in the street grass, waiting for the tram or the Sandringham train. It was already hot, and the busy tram was late, so a few commuters took calls in the shade of the Windsor power plant—a great trapezoidal shard lifted over the train station by supports painted like beanstalks. Black photovoltaics, a decade young, covered the top. The underside was a technicolor cloudscape, sparkling with LEDs.