World Grid Project
World Grid Project
A comprehensive initiative to map and promote the development of a globally interconnected electric grid powered entirely by renewable energy, building on Buckminster Fuller's vision of universal carbon-free electricity access.
The Vision: Fuller's World Grid
One of the clearest and most concrete roadmaps leading to a truly sustainable, equitable, and secure energy future is that charted by a world-around electric grid powered entirely by Earth's renewable energy income. This vision has the potential of providing everyone everywhere with reliable, affordable, and carbon-free electricity.
As Buckminster Fuller noted in Critical Path: "In the early years of Trudeau's premiership of Canada, when he was about to make his first visit to Russia, I gave him my world energy network grid plan, which he presented to Brezhnev, who turned it over to his experts. On his return to Canada Trudeau reported to me that the experts had come back to Brezhnev with: 'feasible... desirable.'"
Even during the Cold War, this vision transcended political ideology, demonstrating its fundamental soundness and universal appeal.
Tracking Spontaneous Cooperation
A World Game™ Workshop team has assembled to develop exercises that illustrate how a comprehensive design science approach can shed new light on humanity's options for addressing the climate crisis. Our primary goal is to engage people around the world in activities designed to help them envision a contemporary realization of Fuller's world grid and its impacts.
We begin by identifying, tracking, and mapping cases of spontaneous cooperation among countries that are integrating their power grids across political boundaries — critical steps leading to the formation of a globally connected grid.
What We Track
How each project was initiated and who was involved (government, private sector, public-private partnerships)
Management Structures
How integrated grids are governed, managed, and operated across borders
Challenges and Opportunities
Technical, regulatory, marketing, and security challenges, plus unanticipated obstacles and opportunities
Success Strategies
Most effective approaches for transcending political borders to create regional grids supporting 100% renewable energy
Reengineering Global Energy Networks
Present hub-and-spoke networks were designed for central power plants close to users. Such networks need to be reengineered for a distributed renewable future. Spanning the world electrically evokes Buckminster Fuller's global grid.
Even before the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, Fuller envisioned electricity wheeled between day and night hemispheres and pole to pole. This approach enables:
- Continuous solar utilization through hemisphere-to-hemisphere energy transfer
- Wind optimization via pole-to-pole distribution networks
- Load balancing across time zones and climate regions
- Market-based efficiency through worldwide deregulation and free trade of electricity
- Price equilibrium establishing a global market price for grid-provided electricity
The Fuller Projection of the global electricity trade network (2018) demonstrates how cross-border electricity trade is already forming a complex network, validating Fuller's decades-old vision with contemporary data.
Change Lab Focus Areas
The World Grid Project touches multiple dimensions of systems change, spanning energy infrastructure, climate action, international cooperation, and economic transformation.
Environment and Infrastructure
Systems Change and Structural Power
Governance, Rights and Democracy
A Vision Validated Across Ideologies
The historical validation of Fuller's world grid concept remains remarkable. During the height of the Cold War, when PM Pierre Trudeau presented the plan to Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet technical experts assessed it as both "feasible" and "desirable."
This cross-ideological validation demonstrated that the world grid transcends political systems and serves universal human interests. The concept appeals to fundamental needs for energy security, economic development, and environmental sustainability that unite rather than divide humanity.
Today, with climate crisis creating unprecedented urgency and renewable energy costs reaching historic lows, Fuller's vision is more relevant than ever. The spontaneous cooperation we're now witnessing in cross-border grid integration projects validates his anticipatory design science approach.
Join the World Game™ Workshop
The World Grid Project invites participation from researchers, policymakers, energy professionals, educators, and citizens worldwide who want to contribute to realizing this transformative vision.
Ways to engage:
- Contribute case studies of cross-border grid integration projects
- Participate in World Game™ Workshop exercises and simulations
- Share technical expertise on grid engineering, renewable energy, or policy
- Help map existing international energy cooperation initiatives
- Connect students and educational institutions with the project
- Support research and documentation efforts
Together, we can demonstrate that comprehensive anticipatory design science offers practical pathways to solving humanity's greatest challenges while improving quality of life for all.
