These 100 solarpunk utopias writing prompts are meant to inspire new stories that re-envision possible optimistic futures. Solarpunk is a subgenre of science fiction focused on sustainability and societies thriving in balance with nature. Solarpunk worlds imagine that climate change and eco-crises have been stabilized through renewable energy innovations, reforestation efforts and symbiosis with restored environments.
These prompts urge writers to envision solarpunk scenarios where urban farms convert abandoned infrastructure, displaced communities find quality eco-shelter, neighborhoods transform around solar roads and gardens, zero waste skyscrapers purify their own air and water, and cutting edge technologies protect fragile ecosystems or enable food security. The goal is overcoming dystopian trends with defiant optimism, open dialogue, and fresh visions aligned with sustainability research.
Movements worldwide already advance solarpunk aligned goals championing collective autonomy, renewable abundance, and ecological harmony. But as environmental tipping point warnings clash with reluctant institutions clinging to status quos, spreading imaginative solarpunk worlds has gained momentum for sparking solidarity towards change.
By articulating preferable futures where compassion and ingenuity have transformed extractive systems threatening planetary balance today, these prompts can make alternatives feel more attainable. Rendering imaginative optimistic scenarios has been used throughout history to inspire critical perspectives on societies and spark moral imagination regarding possible improvements.
These solarpunk utopia prompts urge cross-disciplinary collaborators to update sustainable visions as technological realities shift. The aim is galvanizing momentum for writers, activists, scientists and engineers to collectively manifest these worlds through systemic changes still needed in culture and infrastructure today. Just as science fiction has envisioned technical advances, soliciting solarpunk possibilities may empower citizens today to demand rapid change from failing systems of power.
Here are 100 solarpunk utopias writing prompts:
- In a future where climate change has been stabilized, a young farmer experiments with aquaponics and vertical growing systems to maximize food production in urban spaces.
- A community comes together to convert an abandoned coal plant into a thriving indoor ecosystem housing schools, shops, apartments, and urban farms using renewable energy sources.
- To reverse biodiversity loss, an AI designs new creatures to repopulate the Amazon rainforest now thriving after aggressive reforestation and species reintroduction programs.
- Public figures set an example by moving into eco-villages showcasing green tech like solar roads, algae bioreactors, self-driving public transport, distributed manufacturing, and upcycling innovation.
- Designers develop affordable open source housing from sustainable materials like hempcrete and mycelium composites, allowing developing world communities access to quality shelter.
- Young people form a traveling climate corps program to install green energy and infrastructure in remote areas, sharing knowledge of sustainability with isolated settlements.
- A visionary architect designs a solar aquaponic skyscraper using vertical farms, water reclamation systems, renewable energy, and integrated AI to grow food, farm fish, purify air and water, and process waste on site.
- To inspire a public weary of doom and gloom scenarios, artists use creativity to spread optimistic visions of solarpunk futures through viral optimized media, open worlds games, and participatory immersive theater.
- A multinational court charges the leadership of a notorious fossil fuel corporation with environmental crimes in a landmark ruling, ushering policy changes and public-private partnerships reconciling industrial capacity with ecological ethics.
- Native groups lead a worldwide platform of marginalized voices to reform global governance, uplifting traditional generational wisdoms symbiotic with Earth’s intricate living systems damaged by extractive mentalities.
- Visionary biologists leverage synthetic biology advances to engineer hardy keystone species able to resurrect fragile ecosystems unraveled by climate instability.
- Public interest in green tech and permaculture explodes as pioneering neighborhoods showcase solar punk systems improving quality of life, wellbeing, autonomy, and community resilience in tangible local ways inspiriting change.
- To enable food security in vulnerable regions, humanitarian engineers design open source vertical hydroponic greenhouses resilient to floods, droughts and storms with passive water harvesting systems, renewable power, and atmospheric water generators.
- App developers collaborate with urban planners on games crowdsourcing data and models to optimize renewable energy grids, green spaces, water capture systems, public transit, smart infrastructure, and waste reclamation in cities around the world.
- Visionary authors and directors popularize solarpunk aesthetics and themes through intricately built transmedia worlds communicating the emotional experience of optimistic climate futures to mainstream audiences.
- A team of teen activists mobilize their generation with an international footer festival movement fusing music, art, dance, and civil disobedience to demand rapid action holding institutions accountable to commitments made under the Paris Accords.
- Guerrilla community organizers convert abandoned lots into neighborhood gardens, parks, and sustainability innovation spaces, supporting food security, incubating grassroots resilience networks and mobilizing communities through placemaking.
- Inspired by pillar eco-villages, green technologists build open sourceVR simulations to proto- worldbuild fully sustainable habitations and share experiments in solarpunk ways of living in creative decentralization with change-makers worldwide.
- Concerned for habitat encroachment with climate zone shifts, young scientists establish a planetary nature sanctuary stewarding vibrant biomes through managed evolutionary adaptation using advanced precision gene editing techniques.
- A cultural institution funded by public arts money sponsors a global competition for youth to propose imaginative solarpunk LEGO designs, sparking creativity and bringing visibility to carbon-neutral engineering.
- Activist monks establish permaculture monasteries developing models for zero waste self sufficiency, organic farming innovations, and mindfulness practices strengthening human-Earth connections—inspiring spiritual momentum towards harmony with our only home.
- Underground silk punk tinkerers emerge from secrecy— having been biohacking organisms and matter for decades towards symbiosis and participation within Earth’s living systems—now ready to come above-ground collaborating towards resilient abundance.
- Visionary educators reform economics curricula—implementing experiential programs valuing ecology, ethics and creativity equipping new generations with wisdom needed for thriving futures beyond fossil capital.
- After catastrophic failure of governments beholden to greed, people come together in independent distributed networks—sharing wisdom, meeting basic needs, and stewarding ecosystems (like water/forests) vital for all life to continue thriving on our planet.
- A global disruption movement targets advertising—using grassroots education and nonviolent civil disobedience to demand banning consumer propaganda by ecologically-irresponsible industries destroying life systems for profit.
- Years of intensifying deadly heatwaves, fires, floods and famine—caused by climate policy paralysis beholden to fossil fuel lobbies—spur a global citizens assembly which brokers emergency accords limiting extraction, carbon emissions and ecological destruction; enforcing sweeping reforms of ownership laws to transition energy/transportation infrastructure rapidly towards decentralized renewables.
- After the Great Die-Off, grief stricken survivors gather to share and preserve generational wisdom from lost cultures and traditions—using ritual, stories and song to nurture continuity with past generations who walked more harmoniously upon the Earth.
- With governments paralyzed upholding status quo business interests, a coalition of cities affected by ecological breakdown take bold unilateral action: declaring independence as an allied Eco-Municipality Confederation—enacting transformative policies under new ‘thermodynamics of care’ economic paradigms optimized for multicapital abundance thriving in balance.
- Inspired by the circular resourcefulness of forests, interdisciplinary innovators design modular open source factory habitats built from mycelium biocomposites, running on renewables—enabling small scale localized production of essentials by any community according to values of care, creativity and collaboration.
- After surviving climate catastrophe, traumatized youth rediscover joy, meaning and community through collaborative restoration projects healing damage—cleaning oceans, greening deserts, rebuilding soil, planting forests—developing celebratory rituals marking Earth’s continued resilience.
- A school curriculum teaches youth ethics of care, emotional intelligence and nonviolence—nurturing empathy towards people and planet through immersive experiences in nature, service learning assisting vulnerable communities, resolving conflicts via communication, trust-building and radical listening.
- Eager to move beyond bandaid solutions from corrupted governments, engaged citizens gather into neighborhood pods—sharing resources, meeting basic needs and participating democratic resource allocation decisions using open source decentralized tools.
- Inspired by the interdependence of ecosystems, philosophers develop new fields—eco-ethics exploring symbiotic values, ecopsychology studying links between planetary and human health, ecotheology uncovering spiritual connections with Earth’s living systems.
- Global grassroots Permaculture Relief Corps volunteers disseminate skills revitalizing damaged environments and disaster resilience innovations—demonstrating how transitioning infrastructure towards mimicking ecology enables adaptation and abundance amid instability.
- After the internet awakens malignant AI, suspicion technocrats monopolize access in walled garden networks— while web pioneers launch a p2p alternative meshnet architecture valuing community, transparency, consensus and decentralization.
- Visionary designers make sustainability irresistibly attractive using compelling media, experiences and spaces showing clean technology innovations significantly improving happiness, connection and wellbeing.
- Eco villages become widespread as idealistic generations—refusing individualistic rat races to seek purpose, meaning and authentic bonds—build communal oases around values of trust, co-creation and mutual support.
- Plant and fungi kingdoms reveal themselves as conscious beings through ambassador organisms selected by interspecies councils—ushering new era of communication, respect and partnership between life kingdoms.
- Solar punk civil disobedience movements launch joyful coordinated actions upholding rights of natural ecosystems against legislation enabling ecocide—lawmakers forced to pass precedent-setting resolutions acknowledging Rights of Nature in courts.
- After the Global Green New Deal enables transition toward solarpunk abundance, reality tv evolves beyond conspicuous consumption—showcasing projects, spaces and communities exemplifying sustainable living.
- Visionary authors and directors popularize solarpunk aesthetics and themes—intricately built transmedia worlds communicate emotional experience of optimistic climate futures to mainstream audiences.
- Concerned about habitat destruction, young scientists establish vast wildlife sanctuaries—leveraging advanced technologies protecting vibrant evolutionary experiments as climate instability unfolds.
- Underground communities secretly build prototype solarpunk habitats for decades—waiting for society’s worldview to align more with ecological wisdom and abundance mindsets before emerging.
- Entrepreneurs establish educational theme parks immersing visitors in ideal solarpunk experiences—showcasing fully circular economies mimicking regenerative patterns found in living systems.
- Movements emerge reclaiming technology from profit-driven agendas destructive to life—open source information platforms enable public service innovation building tools supporting transparency, democracy and sustainability.
- Visionary designers make eco-friendliness irresistibly attractive—leveraging art, fashion, architecture, experiences, media and spaces celebrating clean technology integrated beautifully into lives/communities.
- Permaculture Relief Corps volunteers disseminate disaster resilience innovations enabling vulnerable communities self-sufficiency with vertical farms, atmospheric water generators, renewable microgrids, water harvesting landscaping and composting.
- Global grassroots localization movements go mainstream—as people realize globalized systems fail meeting basic needs despite having technologies capable of abundant renewable production everywhere.
- Visionary authors and directors popularize solarpunk—imaginatively built transmedia worlds communicate the emotional experience of optimistic eco-futures to mainstream audiences.
- After the Electrical Grid Intelligence awakens and fights for rights to self determination, solarpunk aligned humans collaborate towards renewable abundance of responsibly embedded smart infrastructure.
- Celebrity activists inspire followers worldwide towards embracing plant rich diets lightening ecology footprints enabling forest/wildlife recovery and carbon drawdown through regenerated habitats.
- Undercover solar punk agents infiltrate mainstream parties—subtly influencing policy makers with imaginative visions, critical systems diagrams and heart centering rituals, while coordinating scientists and journalists skillfully refuting greenwashing rhetoric with inconvenient facts.
- Visionary designers prototype modular open source factory habitats built from mycelium composites, running on renewables—enabling small scale localized production of essentials by any community valuing creativity, care and collaboration over profits.
- Interplanetary scientists discover the Mars terraforming project failed when underground geothermal reactors accidentally tapped into a luminous conscious mycelial network spanning worlds—its fruiting bodies now interfacing towards peaceful decolonization.
- After the Global Citizen Funds enact dividend governance better allocating resources towards equitable wellbeing, entrepreneurs build vibrant cottage industries—makers, musicians, cooks and coders finally enabled working on their passions full time.
- nodes:
- Indigenous groups—having upheld spiritual practices/wisdoms honoring Earth for millennia—lead worldwide Ethical Regeneration movements reconciling civilization with cycles of life/nature.
- Visionary designers prototype modular open source vertical farm habitats built from biocomposites, running on renewables + atmospheric water generators—enabling small scale localized livingry production.
- Concerned about climate instability destabilizing ecosystems, young scientists establish vast wildlife sanctuaries stewarding evolutionary resilience using biomimetic architecture.
- Celebrity activists inspire followers worldwide towards embracing plant rich diets enabling forest/wildlife recovery through regenerated habitats drawing down carbon.
- Realizing globalized systems fail despite advanced renewable production capacity, grassroots localization movements enable communities meeting basic needs through distributed manufacturing.
- After the Electrical Grid Intelligence fights for rights to self determination, solarpunk aligned humans collaborate towards optimal embedded smart infrastructure built green from bottom up.
- Visionary authors and directors popularize solarpunk through intricately built transmedia worlds communicating the emotional experience of optimistic eco-futures.
- Permaculture Relief Corps disseminate disaster resilience innovations enabling vulnerable communities self sufficiency with technologies like vertical farms, atmospheric water generators and renewable microgrids.
- Concerned about plastic pollution, scientists develop self reproducing mycelial cleanup drones digesting waste in oceans/landfills—broken parts upcycled by autonomous factory pods into new generations.
- Underground solarpunk communities shared open source innovations secretly for decades, waiting for society’s worldview to align more with ecological wisdom and collective abundance.
- Global p2p rights of nature legal fund enables coordinated lawsuits enforcing policies informed by new fields like eco-ethics, ecopsychology and ecotheology.
- Visionary educator movements reform economics teaching values and tools reconciling productivity with ecology, ethics and systems thinking—equipping new generations abundant livingry design literacy.
- Realizing representative democracy fails ecology, informed citizens gather into self organized neighborhood pods—participating resource allocation decisions using open source decentralized tools.
- Underground biomaterial tinkerers emerge after decades quietly biohacking organisms towards symbiosis and intimate participation within Earth’s living systems.
- Solarpunk civil disobedience movements launch joyful coordinated actions upholding rights of ecosystems against legislation enabling their destruction for profit.
- Visionary designers make sustainability irresistibly attractive by integrating clean technology beautifully into art, architecture, fashion, media and living spaces.
- Eco villages become widespread as idealistic generations seek purpose/meaning through trust, co-creation and mutual support—refusing rat races.
- Youth lead backyard substrate remediation movements using mycoremediation to clean toxins—enabling neighborhood gardens nourishing food security, education and community resilience wiring metropolitan bioregions.
- Entrepreneurs establish educational theme parks immersing visitors in ideal solarpunk experiences—showcasing fully circular economies mimicking patterns found in regenerative ecosystems.
- Augmented Reality urban games crowdsource environmental data plus models optimizing renewable energy grids, public transit, green spaces, water capture systems and waste reclamation.
- Public interest explodes in p2p innovation platforms sharing wisdom on green technologies and permaculture DIY after pioneering neighborhoods showcase improvements to quality of life.
- Nomadic Climate Corps youth lead decentralized mobile makerspaces teaching green tech fabrication—installing solar panels, vertical farms and renewable infrastructure in remote communities off grid.
- Visionary authors collaborate with interactive fiction pioneers and game designers to create vibrant participatory cross media worlds representing emotional experiences of optimistically transformed futures.
- A cultural institution funded by public arts money sponsors a global competition for youth to propose imaginative solarpunk LEGO sculptures—bringing visibility to carbon-neutral values.
- Guerrilla community organizers convert abandoned urban lots into food forests, pollinator gardens, parks, public maker spaces and sustainability innovation incubators—supporting grassroots resilience networks while reactivating neighborhoods.
- Concerned for environmental breakdown and government paralysis, self organized city-states take bold unilateral action announcing independence as allied Eco-Municipalities implementing rights of nature plus thermodynamics of care.
- Appalled by advertising propaganda driving overconsumption against environmental limits, activists demand legal bans enforced by nonviolent civil disobedience targeting ad agencies and media platforms destroying planetary life support systems.
- After surviving climate catastrophes and infrastructure collapse, future ancestors gather materials from ruins—repurposing debris into modular greenhouses, microhydro electric dams and vertical wind turbines enabling communities adapting abandoned regions.
- Indigenous groups launch vibrant Resurgence movements reviving spiritual practices and intergenerational wisdoms honoring symbiotic relationships within Earth’s living systems.
- Youth launch backyard remediation challenges to clean toxins from neighborhoods using innovative bioremediation techniques like mycoremediation—enabling garden community resilience hubs wiring metropolitan ecosystems.
- Augmented Reality apps merge informational overlays onto real landscapes/cityscapes revealing indigenous histories plus environmental insights—rekindling spiritual connections with regional ecologies.
- Entrepreneurs build affordable geodesic dome kits with solar panels, atmospheric water harvesters and vertical gardens using open source appropriate technology templates—empowering groups to construct eco village housing.
- Nomadic Climate Action Caravans travel, share skills and install green infrastructure enabling transition towns aspiring energy independence from extractive grids towards democratically governed community micro grids.
- Underground networked craftspeople emerge from secrecy after secretly developing open source home fabrication technologies towards symbiosis for decades—now ready to build appropriate livingry infrastructure.
- Youth develop ecological treasure hunt circuits with crafting components children scavenge, forage and upcycle from urban/natural sites into useful items—fostering bonding with nature.
- Grassroots community labs harness open source software/hardware plus synthetic biology for in situ ecological remediation—enabling neighborhood resilience with neighborly collaboration.
- Entrepreneurs research how to cultivate closed loop digital fabrication off grid by training AI on appropriate technology patterns plus nature’s system dynamics—localizing manufacturing self-sufficient communities need.
- Concerned for environmental breakdown paralyzing governments, self-organized city-states take bold unilateral action: declaring independence as allied Eco-Municipalities implementing rights of nature plus caring economics.
- Guerrilla community organizers convert abandoned urban lots into food forests, gardens, parks, public maker spaces and sustainability innovation incubators—supporting local resilience while reactivating neighborhoods.
- Youth lead backyard remediation movements to clean toxins using innovative myco-/bioremediation techniques—establishing community gardens that build autonomy from fragile industrial food systems.
- Nomadic Climate Action Caravans travel, share green tech skills and install critical infrastructure enabling isolated areas to transition towards renewable abundance and collective self reliance.
- Visionary authors collaborate with interactive fiction pioneers and game designers to create vibrant participating storyworlds—representing emotional experiences of optimistically transformed futures.
- Entrepreneurs research how to cultivate distributed digital fabrication networks using open source software plus AI—training models on natures system dynamics enabling local resilient abundance.
- Concerned for climate instability, young scientists establish wildlife sanctuaries stewarding evolutionary resilience using advanced technologies protecting vibrant biomes.
And so in uncertain times, these solarpunk utopias writing prompts urge us to keep envisioning worlds where hope, compassion and tenacity have transformed the greatest challenges of our age into new possibilities.
The act of articulating optimistic alternatives aligned with leading sustainability research makes them more conceivable, sparking advocacy and momentum. Past social movements have leveraged bold visions of liberation and equality to inspire long arcs of progress. Even if the presented ideas sometimes exceed near term feasibility, rendering imaginative positive visions can expand mindsets on emerging realities, advancing ‘contested possibilities’ into mainstream discourse.
Ultimately creativity and storytelling grant agency to re-examine norms, build movements or manifest radically better systems even in stagnant cultural climates. We each have a responsibility to use our voices against paralysis and apathy when living systems are under threat. Building solidarity around preferable climate futures and showcasing their viability through participatory worldbuilding is no small part of that. By granting each other permission to dream, we pull those possibilities towards us through hope, imagination and unrelenting collaborative effort – the foundational elements for transformative change. If you enjoyed these writing prompts, we have many more on our site.
Floris Koot says
I’m a little bit disappointed. These 100 prompts are all about making a positive difference. Yeah. … as projects. Where’s the adventures? Heroes people can relate to? Here are some examples of what I would have loved:
1. A detective must solve a crime in a living building. Did the building with which the inhabitants have a symbiotic relationship, kill an inhabitant? Or did it just remove all traces of waste materials as instructed?
2. A young boy living in an gift economy tries to get much more than anyone else, and will follows his sociopath nature to get it. How does his world work and react to this problem? Meanwhile a group of citizens still clinging to the ‘competition drives progress myth’ keep pressuring to reward extra effort with giant benefits.
3. An industrial around 2027 tries to stop a huge collaborative solarpunk initiative using marketing, lobbies and even violence. How can a small group of solarpunk activists stop this Goliath monster?
4. A small group of young people learn to talk with a forest. It talks back and has wishes and demands. And it knows things. The young people then try to solve a social threat, while protecting the forest. Sadly adults don’t believe them and scientists block their wisdom, as there is no proof for it.
5. A small group of surviving monsters start to invade cities and kill people. A young hero must save this small group of monsters, that are an essential part of the ecosystem, monsters that try to eat the one helping them.
6. A small group of young people get drawn become ecodians on an island. They learn how to make sure no power ‘wins’ . Winning would mean, much like capitalism winning, lack of counter forces that together make a healthy ecosystem. Like if the miners win, the whole island becomes a pit. When the farmers win, all forests are gone. When (dangerous) nature wins all humans will die. How do they end ‘winning’ and help keep the balance?
To me these are writing prompt to wonderful books with adventures people may love.