Heliogenesis

The Heliogenesis Plan

Our work runs in three phases. Each phase has one test, and the test is not a meeting.

Phase one is done. Phase two is open now for new partners.

The loop we are working inside

Instructions become cells, cells become material, material becomes shelter and infrastructure, infrastructure becomes a city, and a city feeds back into biology. Every arrow in that loop is a place where the current economy leaks.

Phase One: Map

We catalogued the field. One hundred and seventy-six projects, each with what it makes, what it replaces, its scale, its funding, and its people. One hundred and four sell commercially. Thirty-five are pilots. Twenty-three sit in a laboratory. Europe holds seventy-seven, North America seventy. Asia holds seventeen and Africa holds one.

Complete, September 2026

Phase Two: Partner

Phase two turns a list into agreements. Ten projects are marked as top candidates and another twenty-two as a strong fit. We approach them with one offer: shared specification, shared data, and an open licence at the end. The test is signed agreements, not meetings held or decks sent. Nothing is signed without an open licence.

Open now

Phase Three: Build

Phase three assembles the layers into one working site: solar, water, materials, food, and shelter, each feeding the next. Success is a second site built by somebody else from our published file, without our help. That is the only test that matters.

Next phase

Life as a Fellow at Heliogenesis

Fellows get unrestricted funding and full freedom over method and site. We ask two things: the data stays open, and somebody else can repeat the result.

Our shared infrastructure lets a fellow run long, ambitious work without a large team.

  1. Funding

    All fellows receive guaranteed multi-year funding with no strings attached. A fellowship covers salary, two members of staff, instruments, and a working budget for materials, laboratory time, and travel between the partner sites. Funding renews on the strength of the whole record, and not on the number of papers published in a year.

  2. The catalogue

    Every fellow works from the same catalogue, so nobody starts from a blank page. It names who already makes the thing, at what scale, in which country, and with how much money behind them. Most of the questions worth asking now sit in the gaps between those entries, and the gaps are where we work.

  3. Partners

    Fellows work with the firms and communities in the catalogue rather than around them. Each written agreement comes with a named contact, a shared specification, and a licence agreed at the very start, so that publication at the end is never a negotiation.

  4. Instruments and sites

    We equip every site with the same instrument set, so that a reading taken at one location can be compared directly with a reading taken at another site in another country.

  5. Operational support

    Backed by the support of a small but very experienced operations team, fellows receive practical help with contracts, permits, purchasing, and seasonal reporting. Our intent is simple: a fellow should spend the week on the actual work, and not on filling in forms.

  6. Exit to Planet

    Every dataset, specification, and design produced at Heliogenesis is released into the commons under an open licence. We keep a decision log for every change to a method, so that anybody can then see why a number moved and judge the whole work for themselves.