This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of new solar energy income metabolised by photosynthetic organisms at a planetary scale, a process fundamental to all planetary life.
THE SOLAR SHARE stages a form of planetary economics based on photosynthesis. Every day a microalgae culture converts sunlight into edible biomass. The yield of the 1 sq.m bioreactor is a concrete means of measuring solar income—actual new energy entering the Earth’s metabolism.

THE SOLAR SHARE project challenges prevailing economic models with insights from sunlight-processing organisms, crucial to life’s metabolism. Featuring a one-square-meter microalgae bioreactor, it highlights human dependence on photosynthesis and proposes phytobiomass (here as edible microalgae) as a new economic unit. This new unit, a “Solar Share” represents the average daily biomass yield on one square meter of Earth’s surface. This edible algae unit is a photosynthetic proof of work that can be consumed, exchanged, or stored as a currency.