What is solar for? AIRE’s new plan for cooperative, sustainable communities solar


This guiding question borrows from the title of a collection of essays, “WHAT ARE people FOR” by agrarian writer, Wendell Berry. It is provocative because it calls our values into question and challenges assumptions. Our conversations and activities at AIRE have recently asked a similar question out of the same vein– What is solar for?


Lampen Lecture at Ancilla College – Designs for Action: Energy, Climate, Cooperation, and Integral Ecology


Jeff Deal and I had the great pleasure to speak to a group of Ancilla College faculty and students, members of the Poor Handmaids for Jesus Christ community, and to community members at large on September 24, 2019. Our Lapen Lecture topic was energy, given that this community had worked a miracle of sorts by


New AIRE working paper on energy transition


I’ve just drafted a wide-ranging paper dealing critically with our present incumbent energy system, its undemocratic characteristics and ecologically dangerous methods, and on the other hand an energy transition that “ought to be.” I’m putting forth the argument that energy transition, in addition to being the more obviously technical project, is also a social project.


The Trial of the Century: Kids, Climate and the Law’s Role in Allocating Responsibility for Harm


AIRE’s interest in community-owned renewable energy is grounded in the idea of rights and justice in the most basic sense. That is, we ought to have the right to choose clean, green, renewable energy, and further we ought to have the right to choose how and by whom it’s generated. Similarly, and on a more