ViviSolari Information

Vivisolari investigates who really owns energy. In 2022, energy prices across Europe tripled almost overnight. Governments spent more than €800 billion stabilising a system that was supposed to deliver cheap power. Families froze. Businesses collapsed. Politicians blamed the crisis on Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. Yet in some places the crisis barely registered. That gap led to a deeper question: if renewable energy is now the cheapest electricity in history, why do bills keep rising? Vivisolari was created to explore that question. Through research, writing, and projects like In the Dark, we examine how modern energy systems are structured, who benefits when prices rise, and why households remain consumers rather than owners. The focus is not simply on technology — solar panels, wind turbines, or batteries — but on the architecture of the system itself: ownership of generation, control of the wires, and the market rules that determine how electricity is priced and distributed. Across Europe and beyond, energy markets were redesigned over the past thirty years around privatisation, financialisation, and centralised control. The result is a system that often prioritises extraction over affordability and fragility over resilience. Vivisolari documents how that system works — and explores alternatives. From community ownership and cooperative grids to new models of local generation and electrification, the aim is to understand how households and communities can move from being passive consumers of energy to active participants in its production and governance. This work combines investigation, analysis, and real-world experimentation. It is not about ideology or technology alone, but about power: who controls it, who profits from it, and who should. The question at the centre of Vivisolari is simple: Who owns energy — and what would it take to take power back?