A standard for the energy and compute industries
Beyond Scarcity.
Intelligence is being built at planetary scale. The only question left is whether it extracts from the Earth or regenerates it. This is the ladder up — and no one is excluded from the climb.
The shift
Every data center asks the world to tolerate it.
The AI build-out is the largest capital migration in history. It asks for power, for minerals, for water — and today it answers with extraction. Data centres drew about 415 TWh of electricity in 2024 and are on course for roughly 945 TWh by 2030, more than doubling in six years.1
We do not think the build-out should stop. We think it should become the thing that heals what it touches.
The standard
Three tiers. One direction. Open to all.
A maturity ladder for any energy or compute operation — coal, gas, nuclear, solar, hyperscale — scored on the Net Positive (N+) methodology. Enter where you stand. Climb in the open.
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I
Extractive
Where most of the industry stands today. Grid-mixed power, mined minerals, consumptive water, no remediation. Joining here is not a judgment; it is a baseline and a public commitment to move.
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II
Transitional
Verified reductions on every axis: additional clean generation under contract, closed-loop or reclaimed water, minerals with documented recycled or domestic content, first remediation projects funded and audited.
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III
Regenerative
Net positive on every axis, independently verified: gives back more energy, water, and living ground than it takes. At its summit sits the state this whole project is named for — Beyond Scarcity — where energy and the elements themselves are no longer taken from the Earth by force.
Draft criteria, open for industry comment. The rubric is the product; it will be built in public.
Net Positive · N+
Not less harm. More life.
Sustainability aims for zero. Net Positive — the practice of giving back more than we take — is the framework Dr. Tia Kansara has carried across 90 countries and 120 organisations. It is the yardstick inside every tier.
Intellectual foundations
Standing on known ground.
- Energy tiers of civilisation
- Kardashev (1964); Sagan's continuous interpolation.
- Post-scarcity and ephemeralisation
- Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969); Bookchin (1971).
- The maturity ladder as mechanism
- Capability Maturity Model (SEI); Technology Readiness Levels (NASA); LEED; B Corp.
- Regenerative design
- Lyle; McDonough & Braungart, Cradle to Cradle (2002); Kansara, N+.
What is new is the marriage: a certification ladder measuring a civilisation's ascent in how cleanly it climbs, not only how high.
The frontier
Where the summit may come from.
Several frontier research programmes report pathways to energy and strategic elements drawn from water rather than mined from the ground. We hold these exactly as their own investigators do: reported results, with independent replication as the gate before any commercial claim.
The standard does not depend on them. The summit does not wait for them. But if they hold, the top rung becomes a floor.
Founders
Sayer Ji
Founder of GreenMedInfo, an open research archive indexing more than 28 million PubMed records; author of Regenerate (Hay House, 2020); steering committee, Make Europe Healthy Again.
sayerji.com →Dr. Tia Kansara
Creator of the Net Positive (N+) framework; founder of Replenish Earth; work across 90 countries and 120 organisations including governments, universities, and the Global Alliance for Banking on Values.
replenish.earth →Co-founders of Ancient Futures and the Legacy Market.
The convening
The ladder is built in the open.
Energy developers, compute operators, materials and water innovators, capital, and the public — join the working group shaping the draft criteria.