Bobbing on the surface of a lake in China’s Anhui Province, 166,000 photovoltaic panels make up the largest floating solar array in the world. Bright green lily pads drift between the panels. The silhouettes of fish glide just below the surface. You’d never guess this place used to be a coal mine.
A turnaround like the one in Anhui Province may seem like an outlier, but it's part of a transformation happening all over the world, in ways big and small. Citizens in Atlanta are converting lawns into food forests. Entrepreneurs in Nairobi are turning plastic waste into bricks more durable than concrete. Aboriginal leaders in Australia are restoring ancient burning practices to land starved for fire stewardship.
This is regeneration. People from all walks of life, coming together right where they are and stitching the broken strands into a better future. Alone, these acts are relatively small. But taken together, they can tip the scales toward a seismic shift that ends the climate crisis and opens a new chapter of human history where life is at the center of everything.
Project Regeneration
Research + Editorial Strategy
Founded by Drawdown author Paul Hawken, this organization emerged following the 2021 release of his New York Times bestseller Regeneration. The book describes a radical new approach to solving the climate crisis that’s emerging in communities around the world. Sustainability implies sustaining the baseline of a broken system; regeneration seeks to transform what’s broken at the root.
Project Regeneration is amplifying this powerful approach through an open-source guide to regenerative climate solutions called Nexus — connecting people at all levels of agency to the resources, organizations and know-how we need to take action.
I was privileged to freelance with and learn from Project Regeneration for over a year, focused on research, writing, and editorial strategy. Check out the challenges and solutions I covered on Nexus (currently in its beta version) below, and see how Project Regeneration’s partners are using our research to spark global collective action on the Planet app.
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Electric Vehicles
Electric vehicles have reached a tipping point toward widespread adoption—and not a moment too soon. From electrifying city bus fleets to experimenting with roads that charge cars as they drive, this piece explores the switch to EVs through a lens of possibility and equity.
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Smart Microgrids
A smart microgrid is like a mini version of the main power grid that’s hyperlocal, independent and intelligent — a simple concept with major implications for the future of clean energy.
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Solar Energy
Solar is key to phasing out fossil fuels and accelerating the electrification of everything. Luckily, its cost has dropped rapidly in recent years while efficiency has climbed.
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Food Apartheid
You may have heard of food deserts – neighborhoods where affordable, fresh food is tough if not impossible to find. But that term doesn’t tell the whole story. This piece digs into the global challenge of food apartheid and highlights communities leading visionary solutions.
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Fire Ecology
Indigenous people have practiced fire stewardship for millennia, embracing fire’s regenerative properties, until colonial laws in places like North America and Australia criminalized these practices and replaced them with fire suppression and exclusion. This piece outlines ways to bring fire’s natural role in nature back into balance.
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Plastics Industry
The public’s understanding of the plastic pollution crisis has been shaped by the industry that created it. This piece focuses on reframing the narrative about plastic from the everyday consumer’s problem to the plastic industry’s responsibility.
Client
Regeneration
Role
Writer + Researcher
Key Collaborators
Samantha Wright
Kavya Gopal
Paul Hawken
Courtney White
Juliana Birnbaum
Jonathan Hawken
Deliverables
Secondary research
Climate action brief writing
Editorial strategy
E-newsletter copywriting