Intensive 8-Week Programme | June-July 2026
The Solar Cohort is our flagship climate adaptation and renewable energy programme.
Designed for youth ages 18-35 passionate about energy systems, regenerative building, and climate justice, this cohort combines expert lectures, hands-on workshops, and community-based projects to transform how participants think about energy, buildings, and climate solutions.
By focusing on solar, we ground our work in a tangible solution that connects policy, community resilience, and technical literacy across continents.
As a cohort, participants are not passive learners but a generation of leaders building shared capacity for sustainable energy futures.
Solar energy represents one of the most accessible, equitable, and scalable pathways toward a just transition. Solar power is both practical and symbolic: it delivers clean, decentralised energy while embodying illumination, renewal, and collective progress.
The Solar Cohort: An 8-Week Incubator for Community Climate Action
Youth aged 18-35 globally, with priority for first-generation university students and those from underrepresented regions. An 8-week online intensive combining weekly seminars, mentorship, and asynchronous work. Each participant designs a real project for their community. A blockchain-backed, verifiable digital certificate signaling competence to employers and universities.
Weeks 1-2
Systems thinking frameworks applied to climate change, how energy, buildings, and carbon cycles interconnect, climate science fundamentals, and Albert Rolfes's philosophy: "Humans as Solar Beings".
Weeks 3-4
Solar energy systems, wind power, and energy storage; green building design and circular economy principles; DGNB Academy's regenerative building frameworks; and renewable energy policy and climate finance.
Weeks 5-6
Community-based energy project design, stakeholder engagement and participatory decision-making, gender-responsive climate action and energy justice, and project management and monitoring & evaluation (M&E).
Weeks 7-8
Turning your project idea into operational reality, accessing seed funding and resources, scaling climate solutions from pilot to adoption, and your role in the global climate movement.
Motivation: You're passionate about climate action and want to learn systems thinking. We especially encourage applications from youth in Africa, Asia, and Global South communities most affected by climate change, first-generation students and those from underrepresented backgrounds, young people leading community climate projects, and career-changers looking to enter the climate/energy sector.
Application process: Open to all cohort alumni; non-competitive, project-focused.
2026: 10 SDG projects will be funded