SWAMPSCOTT — Pastor Ian Holland says that spending almost $85,000 to install solar panels on the roof of his church on Monument Avenue is definitely in keeping with the faith.
“It’s our duty to take care of the earth that God has given to us,” said Holland, pastor of the First Church Swampscott. “We need to live out our responsibility to be stewards of the earth and to all living things.”
So, said Holland, it is entirely reflective of the Christian message to do one’s part in a time of crisis (climate change).
“One translation of the Book of Genesis is that God gave Adam and Eve the responsibility to be stewards of all living things.
“As Christians, we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves,” stated Holland. “Our panels will reduce our carbon footprint dramatically, and are a powerful gesture of love to our neighbors locally and globally, and the generations to come who are at risk from climate change.”
Holland said there were many motivations for undertaking the project, which went on line Jan. 5.
“One, obviously, is the spiritual perspective,” he said. “We want to be active in doing our part for our neighbors. The Christian ethic is to love our neighbors as ourselves.
“Reducing the carbon footprint is movement toward loving our neighbors not just here, but universally.”
Also, he said, that undertaking a solar energy project is even more urgent in a coastal town such as Swampscott.
“Look at how badly the area floods sometimes,” he said. “They have to close the Causeway to Nahant. There can be terrible flooding in Swampscott, Lynn and Marblehead.”
Holland said the church is very visible in the town, “and we wanted to use our building and our roof to communicate a message. Maybe that message will motivate people to do the same thing.”
The 25.2-kilowatt solar array will provide all the energy for the church, Holland says. The 84 panels will produce 28,829 kilowatt hours in their first year and generate a quarter of a million dollars in savings for the church of the estimated 25-year life span of the panels and the roof beneath it.
The project will be paid for in about seven years just on the savings alone, Holland says.
It didn’t take long for this plan to come together.
“I think it’s something many churches have begun discussions and many churches have done. We all share a kind of common sense of responsibility in our church.”
Since First Church is a congregational parish, “the congregation as a whole gets to decide on projects and issues,” Holland said. So, it was the congregation’s choice to undertake the project.
“We’d been talking about doing something like this for a number of years,” Holland said. “We had a series of conversations about costs, and why we were doing it, and so forth.”
Before the church could install the panels, it had to reshingle the roof.
“You want the roof under the panels to have the same life span as the panels themselves,” said Holland, “and that’s about 25 years.”
That was done over the summer, “and it didn’t take long at all.”
The panels were installed by Resonant Energy, a Dorchester-based solar provider. Through a solar purchase agreement, along with a bulk purchase agreement with Resonant, the final price tag for the project was brought down to $85,000.
To pay for the project, Holland said the church used money for its endowment for half, and launched what he calls a mini-capital campaign.
“The solar panels now in place on the roof of First Church are one of many examples of our congregation’s commitment to the stewardship of the planet,” said Karen Rose Brown, a Church Council Chairperson. “The congregation’s decision to switch to solar will have the same impact as preserving 25 acres of forest.”
