Solar Light of the World: Evangelicals Launch Global Clean Energy Campaign

The initiative aims to convert 1 in 5 WEA churches and institutions to renewable power by 2025.

Solar panels could be coming soon to a church near you. Through a campaign called Project 20.’25, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) has set out to get 20 percent of its members to convert fully to clean energy by 2025.

This fall, the global network announced its partnership with Smart Roofs Solar Inc. Together they will help universities, health care facilities, and churches looking to adopt clean power, including offering guidance for local suppliers and providing financing options. The renewable energy initiative builds on the WEA’s efforts to promote creation care, said Chris Elisara, director of the WEA Creation Care Task Force.

Clean energy reduces air pollution, which improves human health and productivity; preserves nonrenewable resources; and cuts down on the emission of greenhouse gases that trap heat and can fuel, among other things, extreme weather that impacts food production and human safety.

“Christians should be at the forefront of efforts to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions because we know that this is our Father’s world,” Galen Carey, the National Association of Evangelicals’ vice president of government relations, told CT. “We also know that these efforts will particularly benefit our most vulnerable neighbors, those whose health and livelihoods most directly depend on clean air and a stable climate.”

There is also a financial benefit to making the shift to renewable energy, with wind and solar power being the most cost-efficient sources when installing new electricity-generating capacity.

“It doesn’t only make environmental and social justice sense—it makes economic sense,” said Brent Nelson, a group manager in the materials and chemical science and technology directorate of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Renewable prices have fallen, and we’ve entered the era of extreme fossil fuels. The easy stuff has been extracted; we now have to go to extreme measures to continue using fossil fuels. This means going forward, it is good financial stewardship to shift to clean energy.” Read More