This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.
On a Sunday morning in Charlevoix, a small town surrounded by lakes in northern Michigan, people gathered in the Greensky Hill Indian United Methodist Church. The small, one-room wooden building is almost 200 years old and the hymns are sung in English and Anishinaabemowin.
It was December, so Pastor Johnathan Mays led an Advent service, one of his last, as he was soon to retire. Between reflections on Scripture, Mays touched on an important undertaking: The church plans to install solar panels on their larger meeting hall, along with Michigan-based nonprofit organization Solar Faithful to do so.
Greensky Hill has a long history of environmental care and stewardship, grounded in Anishinaabe culture, with a majority indigenous congregation.
One of the ministry’s priorities is the “greening of Greensky Hill.”
Mays said it prompts them to ask “how can we use our space and our resources to address those issues for climate care, or creation care, or what some people call Earthkeeping?”
As Greensky Hill works to become more sustainable, it is switching from propane to heat pumps to become more energy efficient. Mays said solar would allow them to use renewable energy and feed that energy back to the grid.
“The biggest issue was how do we get this big building of greenhouse gas creation?” he said, referring to the meeting hall, which was built in the 1990s.
Across the country, houses of worship aspire to solar systems.
As of 2021, about 2 percent of houses of worship in the United States have solar systems, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which runs the University of California for the US Department of Energy. It’s excessively high; houses of worship make up only 0.6 percent of all non-residential buildings.
Grist / Izzy Ross
But these projects can be difficult to execute. Congregations may have tight budgets, older buildings and more pressing priorities. And switching energy systems can mean a lot of bureaucratic paperwork that they may not have the staff for.
And because houses of worship generally don’t pay taxes, they’ve also had trouble taking advantage of tax breaks for renewable energy.
One alternative was for them to work with third parties who could benefit from the tax credits. For example, an investor can buy and install solar panels on a church. The church would buy that power from the investor but would not own the panels — an arrangement called a power purchase agreement.
Now they have another option. The federal Inflation Reduction Act made it possible for governments and tax-exempt entities, including houses of worship, to get tax credits for renewable projects. Called direct paymentoffer the program to them a tax credit worth up to 30 percent of the installation cost. That can help cover some expenses, and advocates say it’s critical to get more congregations to consider solar power.
“I expect in the coming year, it’s going to really boom, the solar power on houses of worship,” said Sarah Paulos, the program director for Interfaith Power and Light. “It makes a lot of sense. If they can cut their utility bill way back, then they have more money to do what they’re there for, which is their mission.”
Interfaith Power and Light may sound like a local utility (or maybe a prayer group), but it’s actually a national network focused on climate action and religion, started in 1998 as a coalition of Episcopal churches working together to buy renewable energy. It has since expanded to other denominations and faiths.
Paulos has been working in this field for almost 20 years. She said when she started, there were many climate deniers, especially in churches.
“In the beginning, people of faith were really courageous and went out and talked about responding to climate change through renewable energy and energy efficiency as a moral call to care for creation,” she said.
While there is increasing acceptance that climate change is occurring, religious Americans are still far from united in their views.
A 2022 Pew Research Center recording found that most religious adults believed they should protect the earth. But for a variety of reasonshighly religious people tend to be less concerned about climate change than other US adults
One way to reach people and engage them in climate action is through tangible efforts like solar power, says Leah Wiste, the executive director of Michigan Interfaith Power and Light.
“In the public conversation, I think we’ve kind of failed to see the leadership that people of faith and conscience are taking on these issues,” she said.
Local involvement is critical to getting more people to install solar power and non-residential buildings – such as schools or houses of worship – are part of that.
A study published last November in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy found that when non-residential buildings install solar power, they can spur other installations in the area.
But raising awareness of solar doesn’t necessarily make it more fair.
The researchers say it’s unclear how effective houses of worship can be at encouraging more solar in their communities “without directly addressing low-income barriers to solar adoption,” such as budget constraints and lower home ownership rates.
And solar-powered houses of worship are disproportionately located in “relatively affluent, white and educated census tracts,” according to Berkeley Lab, reflecting the broader trend.
Still, many people who work at the intersection of religion and renewable energy say these projects are an opportunity for more people in those communities to learn about solar power.
“Part of that can happen just by the simple physical act of putting a system on the roof,” said Galen Barbose, a scientist at Berkeley Lab. “But houses of worship are also in a unique position to sponsor events, speak to their membership and potentially truly serve as ambassadors for solar energy.”
Rob Rafson has worked for years to put solar panels on churches. He is the president of the solar company Chart House Energy.
About a year ago, Chart House Energy teamed up with the Climate Evidence ProjectMichigan Interfaith Power and Light, and Detroit-area climate activists to launch Solar Faithful.
Rafson wanted to make it easier for houses of worship to adopt solar power.
“It was a very big challenge,” Rafson said. “Because churches — they’re nonprofits, they don’t have a budget, they don’t want to borrow money, and the size of the project … is too small for investors to invest in.”
Despite such challenges, congregations have succeeded in installing panels. At the First Lutheran Church in Muskegon, a new solar array shines on the roof.
“They are hard to see,” said Pastor Bill Uetricht. He walks around the church, cranes his neck and tries to get a good view of the panels. “You can see that it’s on about half of that roof up there.”
Now that it has solar panels, the church has to buy less power from utilities. This is expected to lower the energy bill.
This is an example of a power purchase agreement. By purchasing the solar-powered energy, First Lutheran will pay off the project cost of about $175,000 to an investor. By buying the power from their own array, they are slowly paying back their investor. Once this is done, the power coming out of the array is essentially free.
Grist / Izzy Ross
Uetricht said First Lutheran got involved in solar power when a couple in the congregation gave the church two panels they didn’t know what to do with.
“I contacted a cousin of mine who works in alternative energy, and I said, ‘Hey, send me to a place where I can do something with these two panels,'” Uetricht said.
They ended up working with Solar Faithful.
Uetricht said installing solar panels is one way to fulfill their mission. He said that the world does not belong to us, but that it is a gift – one that we did not care for.
“Old technologies contributed to that lack of care,” he said. “So it only makes sense that we would be at the forefront of encouraging alternative energy sources.”
