Solar Power & Religious Buildings

Religious buildings could save up to 42,000 carbon tonnes a year if solar panels are used to replace conventional electricity measures says British Gas, the UK’s leading energy and home services provider. Just to put it into perspective, 42,000 carbon tonnes works out at around about 500 transatlantic flights! Not only will it save significant amounts of carbon tonnes being emitted, but it will also save religious buildings potentially hundreds and thousands of pounds. They [British Gas] used an example of a mosque that has recently converted to solar power and had the solar panels installed on the roof of the building which is saving £5,000 a year in electricity bills.

Solar powered panels are ideal for religious buildings because they are most commonly positioned to the south, this means that they get optimum amount of sunlight during the day.

Religious buildings are ideal because most of them are south-facing; meaning that they get the optimum amount of sunlight during the day and with the recession hitting churches, mosques and synagogues harder than ever it would be an ideal scenario for them to get on board with energy saving measures such as this as soon as possible.

In May this year a church in north London finished covering its south-facing roof with solar panels known as PV tiles and is now using them to generate energy.

Fr Shaun Richards, the parish priest of St Silas Church in Pentonville, said: “Even though not all UK churches could adopt this model due to planning and architectural conservation laws, there may be thousands of Church of England buildings out there that could help create a greener future by generating clean energy as well as some much needed income.”

In Birmingham, the Masjid-e-Hamza Mosque will soon be making as much as £6,400 a year from Feed-In Tariffs, having installed solar panels as part of the Sustainable Mosley project.
The scheme is likely to appeal to churches as their Sunday collections have been hit by the recession, and because many clergy are committed to caring for the environment.