Faith communities are stepping up and showing great leadership in taking direct local action on climate change. We heard a couple of weeks ago about how a church in Lexington MA had built a 25 KW solar system for its energy needs.
A group of three Boston congregations -- Second Church (Dorchester), Church of St. Augustine St. Martin (South End), and Bethel AME Church (Jamaica Plain) -- just completed their own solar deployment working with Resonant Energy, and in the process demonstrated how to keep justice and jobs front and center. It's been written up in a great blog post by the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond.
Three Boston congregations recently joined forces to put solar panels on their rooftops, capable of producing 70 kilowatts of clean energy to power our congregations. This is equivalent to the amount of electricity required to power about eight homes. Just as the project was getting started, cuts to the state solar compensation program almost killed the project, but we persevered through anyway...
As people of faith we are asking the question: how can we be stewards of the earth and tackle urgent problems like climate change while also addressing equity issues? Solar on our churches is one great way to start. Our congregation has already invested in exploring how to reduce our impact on the planet in many ways, including water conservation, recycling, and energy efficiency. We saw playing a leadership role in solar energy as another way to walk the talk.
In addition to producing clean energy, a solar installation has many other benefits: it shows us how solar works, lets our community members and our leaders experience it, and illustrates how clean energy can provide additional benefits to our community, like good jobs...
Mariama goes on to share several key lessons learned from the experience, through which they will continue to build momentum and work with their communities.
Please read her full post here.
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