My name is Siemen, but what my name is, or my age, or my studies, doesn’t matter so much. What matters is that we are now in one of the most important times in human history. We, WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) people live like no generation in human history could have imagined. This is actual utopia, and I am so grateful to live inside of it. But this great prosperity was not built to last. As you know we are now facing rapid climate change, sea level rise and mass extinction. And we, WEIRD people have the privilege and power to do something that can literally change the course of earth’s history for millions of years to come. And that, motivates me more than anything else.

So what do I do? Well, the change starts with yourself. I don’t consume animal products, I use only my bike and public transport to get around, I buy second hand products as much as possible, I fight food waste through dumpster diving and foodsharing, and many more little experiments. I love this because I’m always trying something new and it’s very gratifying knowing the positive change it makes. But individual action can only go so far... What we need is system change. So I experimented by giving my energy to activism, governmental projects and NGOs. And along the way I picked up many interesting lessons. But the way I feel I can do the most is by being an entrepreneur.

This is why I founded Biosphere. A technology startup with the goal to develop and distribute open-source technologies available to people worldwide. The name Biosphere comes from the idea of Biosphere consciousness, coined by economist Jeremy Rifkin as a next step in the evolution of human worldview. Biosphere consciousness is the knowing that all life has to share a thin layer of air and water on top of a lifeless rock in lifeless space, and that the only way to prosper is to work together in taking good care of our only home. Rifkin set out a vision for a new industrial revolution, where a climate-neutral society is built upon a distributed clean energy, communications and transportation infrastructure. This is what Biosphere is working on, focusing on energy first.

With my company I am developing a new type of solar panel. One that allows us to harvest the plentiful energy from our sun just like normal panels but is open-source and modular. The benefit of modularity is that the product can be easily repaired or upgraded, meaning less waste and more energy production. Normal companies do not like modularity and durability because it simply means they don’t sell as many products. But if you sell the service the product delivers (in this case energy) and maintain the product yourself, modularity and durability actually pay off. Besides this, we believe ideas should not be private property, that is why we open sourced our design. Also, we believe companies should be owned by people who care about the mission, not just economic growth. That is why the company will never enter the stock market, but rather set up a cooperative.

Doing things differently makes it harder for people to understand what you are doing, but if you succeed you will show that doing things the right way can be successful too. My goal is to do develop circular clean technologies and give anyone low-cost access to the services they provide, to hopefully disrupt the wasteful and inequal system we live in today. Academic research (in my case with a bachelor’s in International Business and master’s Industrial Ecology) gives you the tools to scientifically test new ideas and objectively know whether they are as good as you think they are. But academia alone is not enough to implement the ideas in the real world. For this we need government, activism, and business. And the latter is my way to make the change the world needs right now.

If you want to join my mission, or simply have a chat, feel free to connect