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NC Faith Communities Go Solar

November 10, 2011 by chris

North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light, a program of the Council, is proud to announce that this year has been a banner year for faith communities in North Carolina to go solar. Three faith communities have successfully installed solar projects on their property in the past few months, Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte (picture above), Temple Emmanuel in Greensboro, and the Montreat Conference Center in Montreat. First Congregational United Church of Christ installed their solar panels in February.

We know that people of faith embrace their cathedrals, churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples as sacred. In the best of scenarios, houses of worship hold a community together and serve as a central focus for community life in general. Symbolically and in reality, people of faith strive for their sacred spaces to be the center of good works and community service.

As people of faith have become more deeply engaged in environmental stewardship they have begun to recognize that rapidly accelerating climate change has become one of the greatest challenges that civilization has ever faced. Some are doing energy audits and making steps to reduce energy use, or designing new buildings and additions that are highly energy efficient. These actions are taken out of love for the beauty and goodness of God’s work and the desire to observe our responsibility to preserve and protect it.

NC IPL believes that it is important for congregations to be leaders in their communities by installing solar systems, and we are committed to helping forge this precedent-setting path forward. Seeing solar panels on a house of worship becomes an iconic marker to the broader community, a demonstration of the congregation’s love of the Creator and creation, and it shows a commitment to change our relationship to energy, especially fossil fuel use. It becomes a moral statement, a rejection of our use of fossil fuels and the damage that such use brings to all in our shared earth community.  These solar billboards for care of creation express a clear commitment that the broader human community cannot ignore.

Each faith community mentioned above used a different approach for financing their projects. You can read more about Solar for Congregations on our Solar Clearinghouse document.

-Richard Fireman, Public Policy Coordinator, NC Interfaith Power & Light

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Environment

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Paul Felix Schott says

    March 10, 2012 at 5:52 pm

    INSTALL A SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEM YOU MIGHT BE THE ONLY ONE WITH LIGHTS ON.
    This nation’s electric power grid is something most all of us think will never fail. Larger storms are putting more people without power in the dark every year worldwide.

    One event not from a storm like the 2003 blackout on the northeast coast of the United States that took place. That event left over 50 million people in the United States and Canada and many from all other nations that were visitors to America in the dark for days. No TV or Radio for many. Many went without water to their second floor or beyond. Many had no running water at all. For the first time electronic banking stopped on the east coast of America. Many will never forget the telephones did not work. Most all transportation came to a halt no traffic lights, and gas stations no electric power to pump the gas pumps. The smell of sewage was everywhere in the inner cities. For the first time millions of Internet Users vanished off the internet till in January of 2011 in Egypt Government Censorship.

    Now except for a few smart ones that had a backup generator till there fuel ran out.
    Most of them only think the power would be out for a day or two 24 to 48 hours. A few had enough fuel for longer put not many. Hospitals and Shelters were the only lights on in all the cities up and down the east coast at night. They had Natural Gas Generators or Diesel with large storage tanks.

    Perhaps the only ones you can call really smart were the ones with a Solar Energy System their lights were a Lighthouse Beacon to all around. Their lights were on every night and the gate and garage door remotes still worked.

    Now being the director for safety many times in my life i would say the owners of the ones that had a Solar Energy System really did care for their family.

    There will be many more times the Power Grid will go down be safe not sorry.

    Renewable Energy is the way to go in the right places Wind, Hydro, Geothermal and others. Solar is clearly leading to way worldwide, with a close second Wind Power.

    Let us all look to Investing in Clean Cities and Clean Energy for the Future of our children.

    GOD Bless
    The Lord’s Little Helper
    Paul Felix Schott

    If you want to build a Storm Shelter. Do not use wood or sheet metal.
    Build a safe structure room out of strong heavy block two rows thick build with block and reinforcement rod, # 5 rebar throughout all of it. The inside wall filled with concrete and #5 all the way down to the footing built on a good deep foundation. With a thick concrete floor. The floor connected to a Monolithic Foundation wall with the footing at least three feet underground. Make sure you are high above the water flood plane. Better if it can have dirt put around it like a large dirt mound.

    Photo of “The Patriotic Trumpet Player” Playing for church service at Tornado site Lady Lake, Fl 2007

    Reply

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