It was a decade ago that I glimpsed how renewable energy would profoundly transform our lives. I was living in Mauritius at the time and assisting with research on climate change adaptation. As the scene of the crime for the first recorded anthropogenic extinction – the dodo – it was an auspicious place to think about our relationship to the earth and what the future holds.

As a part of this work, I gave a presentation to a local group, mostly young people, regarding the basics of climate change and what it might mean for the island. The potential impacts of on Mauritius are ever evolving, but, as you can imagine, it doesn’t look good for a cyclone-prone, small island developing state surrounded by coral reefs where most of the populace lives near sea level. At the end of the presentation, the audience sat in silence for a moment before a young man timidly asked, “Well, what can we do to stop it?” My mind grasped for an answer. I responded by saying that I wasn’t quite too sure of anything that an individual in Mauritius could do to change things; that the change that was needed would have to be global and systemic in scope.

That question and my answer haunted me in the days to come. The country most responsible for Mauritius’s plight is where I was born – what was I doing on the opposite side of the planet presenting on the dire threat of climate change to people with essentially zero responsibility? I decided that I was done doing presentations on climate change and that we needed to collectively envision a different future and start building it. I just had no clue what that future could look like, but I began asking the question. It wasn’t long before I found an answer. I met Fred Sisson, one of the founders of REC Solar, who carefully explained the economics of solar PV and the promise that it held for decarbonization over a cup of coffee. A few weeks later I visited Madagascar, and a vision of the future came together as I stared out the window on a jarring ten-hour bus ride through the countryside and countless saw small solar modules perched on the roofs of humble homes: a world powered by renewable energy.

The revelation that renewable energy is the key to addressing climate change, developmental disparities, and environmental limits would launch me headlong into designing and building renewable energy systems, international development work, and climate activism. A decade later, that hope has not diminished, but the challenges associated with a rapid transition to world built around renewable energy are more apparent than ever. Shorter Circuits is a space to explore the hope and challenges of the energy transition.