Sporting ‘Make America Green Again’ baseball caps at the Unitarian Univeralist Congregation’s celebration are, from left: Brian Dugas, president of board at UU Congregation; Chris Garza, from the office of U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright; Katie Ruth representing PA Interfaith Power and Light; Rob Lewis, UU congregation member; Jack Barnett, Clean Energy Co-op; Rabbi Daniel Swartz from Temple Hesed in Scranton, and UU congregation members Debi Schauss, Beth Black and Jim Spak.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Unitarian Universalist congregation hopes to inspire others
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There’s a scene in the movie “Around the World in 80 Days” in which Phileas Fogg and his friends, desperate to win a wager, resort to a practice that seems crazy and dangerous and, in the long run, wouldn’t be sustainable.
“They were stripping all the wood from their steamship to feed the boiler on their race across the Atlantic,” Rob Lewis said, comparing that to the way “we are now burning the sequestered carbon that it took our ‘spaceship earth’ millions of years to store underground.”
Despite the threat environmental degradation and climate change poses to humans and other species, Lewis, a semi-retired architect from Lehman Township, told members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Wyoming Valley last weekend he sees reason for hope.
The UU congregation’s recent gathering, after all, was a celebration of “the Greening of Our Sanctuary,” and the congregation hopes its recent installation of 40 solar panels on its roof will inspire other groups and individuals to make similar choices.
“It is the right thing to do for the planet,” Lewis said.
Several other speakers joined Lewis in talking about the rewards of solar panels, which use energy from the sun instead of fossil fuels to generate electricity. That can translate to significant reductions in utility bills as well as tax credits for owners of homes and businesses and, as a result of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, cash for non-profits who install solar panels.
More important, Rabbi Daniel Swartz from Temple Hesed in Scranton told the group, “going greener” is the socially and morally responsible choice.
An ardent environmentalist who is executive director of the Scranton-based Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, Swartz was one of 40 religious leaders from around the world who were invited to meet with Pope Francis in October 2021 and compose a joint statement about climate change.
“It was an amazing experience to work with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the World Council of Churches and folks from the Vatican. It was definitely a life highlight,” Swartz later told a reporter. “One of the key things was talking about the moral obligation of wealthier countries to help poorer countries. Wealthier countries have caused more of the problems of climate change, and poorer countries suffer more from climate change.”
“There’s a need for justice between nations and between generations,” he said. “We have to understand our obligation to future generations.”
So, how can solar panels help?
If you use the Unitarian Universalist Congregation’s recent experience as an example, in the three months since the solar array went online in late December, it has generated more than 3 megawatt hours of electric power.
“We have saved 5,000 pounds of carbon,” Lewis said.
The effort to green the sanctuary started 14 years earlier, when the congregation had an energy audit. To make the church building more energy efficient, Lewis said, “we air-sealed the attic floor with spray foam to reduce air infiltration and exfiltration and then added 12 inches of blown-in cellulose insulation. This reduced our heating oil consumption in the first winter by about 10 percent.”
Last year the congregation removed its outdated oil-fired furnace and replaced it with a high efficiency, gas condensing boiler for on-demand hot water and to provide backup heating with the existing baseboard hot water system.
“Then we installed two Mitsubishi Hyper Heat ductless mini-split outdoor electric heat pumps with five wall-mounted indoor units,” Lewis said. “This reduced our heating bills by nearly 50 percent, and also added air conditioning in the summertime. But we were still purchasing electricity generated by coal or natural gas-fired power plants.”
“We agreed that installing solar panels would provide us with sustainable green energy,” Lewis explained in his remarks during the celebration. “So we replaced the asphalt shingles on our south-facing roof with standing seam sheet metal roofings. This provided a more durable roof and facilitated the installation of the solar array.”
“Then we negotiated a 25-year power purchase agreement with Jack Barnett of the Clean Energy Cooperative, granting them an easement to our roof and utility room in order to install the solar array. Jack organized a group of slow-money investors from their membership, and raised the capital to purchase and install the solar array. They agreed to sell us the green solar power generated by the array for 11.5¢ per kilowatt hour, the same rate that we are currently paying UGI.”
“The LLC formed by the co-op then hired Buselli Solutions, Inc. from Honesdale to install the roof-mounted array,” Lewis said, adding the panels provide “all the electric power needed to heat and light our sanctuary, although, because of the room configuration downstairs, we still use some propane to heat our restrooms, kitchen and classrooms.”
So, what can you do if you’d like to go greener?
• If you’re affiliated with a non-profit or community-focused organization that could benefit from social panels, check out the website of the Wayne County-based Clean Energy Co-Op (cleanenergy.coop).
In addition to financing the Unitarian Universalist project, that Co-Op has financed solar panels at The Cooperage in Honesdale, and on barns at Willow Wisp and Anthill organic farms.
The group formed several years ago, Jack Barnett said, with the intention of making solar energy more visible.
• Consider planting trees which, among their many benefits, produce oxygen, clean the air and can reduce the temperature of urban “heat islands.”
“We are looking into the possibility of applying for a grant (for a tree planting project),” said Rabbi Swartz, who is delighted that the Inflation Reduction Act includes an allocation of $1.5 billion for trees. “If folks are interested in helping an effort like that get under way I’d be happy to talk to them.”
Many trees that have stood in Northeastern Pennsylvania since “the previous generation of planting” are coming to the end of their lives, Swartz said, especially if they haven’t been well-maintained.
He’s hoping grant money could be used “not only for the planting of trees but for long-term employment in tree maintenance.”