Renewables energy company Green.com.au has launched a provocative ‘Solar Inheritance’ campaign, suggesting solar panels installed in cemeteries could help reduce costly energy bills nationwide.
The campaign has called on Australia’s 3,400 cemeteries to host solar panels to generate renewable energy—and even suggests some be placed on sun-soaked graves.
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Designed by Australian brothers and Green.com.au’s founders David and Jono Green, the scheme is a self-admittedly provocative attempt to promote solar panel use to bring down energy bills in the cost of living crisis.
David stars in the dramatic, satirical, black-and-white short video, making tongue-in-cheek remarks like: ‘We’ll install a solar panel right here on your relative’s roof. It generates power, you get your energy bills paid. [It’s] prime sun estate they’re dying for you to use.’
“This is deliberately uncomfortable. But so is telling younger Australians to absorb rising energy costs, climate costs and housing while thousands of hectares of land sit unused in the full sun,” Green said of the campaign to News.com.au.
“We’re asking a serious question in the most unignorable way possible: why can’t the dead help power the living?
“People will say putting solar panels on graves is disrespectful, but we think leaving living Australians buried under energy bills while sun-soaked land sits unused is more disrespectful.”
To help bring the idea to life, the company is inviting Aussies to nominate their local cemetery and help push for a national rollout of the scheme.
Constructing solar panels in cemetery sites is not a new idea. In fact, it’s already been introduced in parts of Europe.
France’s St Joachim township has installed a canopy of semi-transparent solar panels over its cemetery, with posts erected between grave rows. The canopy generates 1.3 megawatts of power for its 4,000 residents, 97% of whom approved the initiative.
In Spain, Valencia’s Requiem in Power (RIP) project is transforming municipal cemeteries into urban solar farms to help the city achieve its 2030 net zero goals. Upon completion, it will be Spain’s largest urban solar farm, with nearly 7,000 solar panels installed on the roofs of crypts and mausoleums.
In theory, Australia’s 4,300 cemeteries could offer ideal sites for schemes like these, but in practice, there are many challenges to consider.
Major Australian cities currently face critical shortages of cemetery land, with available burial space projected to hit full capacity in the coming decades, according to the ABC.
While approximately 70% of Australians now opt for cremation, centuries-old perpetual tenure and population growth mean metropolitan sites are rapidly running out of room, so installing the panels on ‘spare land’ may prove more difficult than previously imagined.
This could be overcome by erecting solar panels on grave sites, but this presents a new set of challenges: public backlash over perceived disrespect, religious and cultural objections, complex space restrictions around existing graves, and disruption of delicate cemetery operations such as landscaping.
Green.com.au’s Jono Green says while the Solar Inheritance campaign is extreme, it urges Australians to think creatively about the spaces and resources available to accelerate the clean energy transition.
“This campaign is about asking where else clean energy can come from, and how those savings can reach more people,” Jono says.
“Solar has always been about using what we already have – roofs, land and sunlight.”
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The renewable energy company is launching a social media competition as part of its campaign, with five winners awarded a home solar bundle or free energy bills for a year.
Competition entries will open on June 15.
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