A residential solar installation.

The Environmental Justice Center at Chestnut Hill United Church has been working for years to slow climate change.  Although climate disruption will hurt almost all sectors of the natural and human worlds, the Center recognizes that those at the margins of society – the elderly, the very young, people of color, the medically fragile, the poor – will be disproportionately and unjustly harmed.  Thus, addressing climate change is a moral imperative for the Center and its host organization, Chestnut Hill United Church.

Recognizing that current political leadership in Washington is not likely to take any meaningful actions soon to promote clean energy, which avoids the pollution of fossil fuel energy and slows climate disruption, the Environmental Justice Center is encouraging individuals to do more to lower their carbon footprints.

“We are distraught that President Trump has chosen to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord,” said Joy Bergey, the Center’s director. “While we will keep the pressure on our elected leaders to move us towards a clean energy economy – the only ethical choice, we also want to help communities take their energy future into their own hands, as it were.”

To that end, the Center is partnering with Northwest Philly Solar Co-op to help residents learn what’s involved in putting solar panels on the roof. The Solar Co-op is working with solar installers to arrange neighborhood-by-neighborhood buying groups. This results in lower prices and a more streamlined process for everyone involved.

According to Meenal Raval, the co-op’s coordinator, a group of 12 Mt. Airy households recently formed the first neighborhood buying group, with solar panels being installed on all these properties. This has resulted in a cumulative reduction of 60 tons of carbon pollution, the same benefit as planting about 24 acres  of new forest.

“We’re actively forming more groups in Northwest Philly neighborhoods, and we’re eager to create groups in the nearby suburbs like Cheltenham, Erdenheim, Ambler, and Lafayette Hill,” Raval said.

The group will meet on Sunday, June 25, at 11:30 at Chestnut Hill United Church, 8812 Germantown Avenue (directly across from the Women’s Center of Chestnut Hill Hospital.) Topics of discussion will include good sites for solar panels as well as issues like pay-back periods and available tax breaks.

The event is free, and all are welcome.

Contact joybergey@gmail.com or 215-313-1311 for more information.