Climate Conversations with PA IPL & JEA – August 21, 2024

Join Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light and the Jewish Earth Alliance on August 21 at 7:00pm for a discussion promoting the Solar for Schools program recently passed in PA. Solar for Schools will help school districts across the Commonwealth install solar panels to lower energy costs while reducing carbon pollution – ensuring more resources will go to our students and teachers. There is plenty of federal and state money available, but few school districts know how to apply. We need local champions to call their school districts!

Speaker: Liz Robinson – Executive Director, Philadelphia Solar Energy Association

The Solar for PA Schools Grant Program (Solar for Schools) is a targeted state investment that would fund solar energy projects at public k-12 schools, community colleges, and career technical schools across Pennsylvania. If implemented, the project has the potential to:

• Save schools money and increase the predictability of energy costs
• Create family-sustaining, local jobs
• Increase Pennsylvania’s renewable energy production

Energy is one of the highest expenses for school districts in Pennsylvania. On-site solar can reduce those energy costs, potentially saving Pennsylvania school districts hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. These savings make solar a crucial tool in combatting underfunding that affects rural, urban, and suburban schools across the Commonwealth; schools could use money they save on utilities to fund other needs, like repairs, or to save taxpayers money.

The construction of solar projects would create family-sustaining jobs in communities across the Commonwealth. Kids would be able go to schools powered by solar arrays built by their parents and neighbors, seeing the impact of union jobs and clean energy on their lives. At the same time, we could decrease our reliance on fossil fuels and reduce pollution, benefitting the environment.

Investing in solar energy is a blue-green cause: it unites labor and environmental interests to create family-sustaining jobs, helps facilitate PA’s transition to clean energy, and save schools money. Support for Solar for Schools is bipartisan and diverse, including labor, environmental, educational, and industry groups. From the Evangelical Environmentalist Network to the PA Building Trades, organizations across the Commonwealth are putting their full weight behind the legislation.

The Solar for PA Schools Grant Program would fund 50% of the cost of project construction using state funds. Federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act would cover 30-50% of the remaining installation costs, with school districts responsible for 0-20%, plus operation and maintenance costs. Using this combination of state dollars and federal funding available through the Inflation Reduction Act, the cost to schools is minimal, and the projects would bring federal funds back to Pennsylvania. Now is the time to incentivize solar adoption, meet our climate goals, and support our public schools!

This event is part of our Climate Conversations quarterly program series hosted in partnership with Jewish Earth Alliance.