The Keystone XL pipeline alternate route has been approved. But activists are still working to stop it.
Solar XL
This is a cheeky effort by a coalition of tribes, landowners, and activist groups to erect solar panels along the pipeline route. The panels generate energy for the local community, and would have to be removed in order for the pipeline to be built.
“The contracts say you can’t have any permanent buildings along the pipeline route,” says Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska, a group that organizes farmers, ranchers, and tribes against the pipeline. “So TransCanada would be forced to remove them.” Destroying community-built solar installations to build an oil pipeline? Not the best look.
Solar XL is part of the broader work that tribal groups have been doing for years to go off the grid, says Faith Spotted Eagle, a member of the Yankton Sioux Nation in South Dakota and an organizer against the pipeline. “We’ve already been moving in the direction of solar,” she says. Planting those panels in the center of the pipeline path is the logical next step, Spotted Eagle points out.
Everything about this is incredibly solarpunk.
You can learn more about SolarXL and donate to help them keep building solarpanels here.