Holy Power: UCC Church Goes Green

SALISBURY — It took about three years, but the Congregational Church of Salisbury, UCC, is green.

Not the exterior paint job. By “green” the church is referring to the upgrades in lighting, heating and cooling, plus an electric vehicle charger that have resulted in the church reducing its emissions by a significant amount.

A handout from Pastor John Nelson claims the church has reduced by “a whopping 87 tons.”

In an interview Wednesday, Aug. 13, Nelson said the church’s “Green Team” had made smaller changes in operations, mostly around recycling, prior to 2020. The Green Team consists of Theresa Carroll, Ruth Choate, Angela Lomanto, Kerry Noble and Karin Noyes.

In that year the team developed a more ambitious plan, starting with swapping out the old light fixtures with LED lighting.

Nelson said this was tricky. There were fluorescent lights way up high in the ceiling, and the contractors couldn’t get at them from the roof.

So for a week the church interior was full of scaffolding as workers removed the old lights and installed the new ones from within.

Nelson said the crew got the job done in under a week and without affecting Sunday services, a feat he found impressive.

The next job was to install solar panels on the roof and ditch the old oil burners for electric heat pumps.

This required a new roof, and approval from the Historic District Commission.

It was the commission’s first experience with solar panels in their jurisdiction.

Switching to electric heat pumps was facilitated by incentives from Eversource.

In an Aug. 6 interview, Eversource’s Ricardo Jordan said the typical process is for a business to hire a contractor that specializes in green energy conversions, and the contractor approaches the power company.

Jordan said many of his customers are interested in saving money and/or in reducing their carbon footprint. He said the church was interested in both.

Nelson agreed and added that the church’s interest had a theological underpinning.

He noted that Congregational churches tend to have plain architecture, part of a reaction against the ornamentation of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.

But the plainness has another function, Nelson added. As worshippers look out the plain windows, they are encouraged “to be impressed by the beauty of God’s creation.”

“Stewardship of the created order is fundamental to the Congregational mission.”

The final piece of the puzzle was the installation of Salisbury’s first electric vehicle charger. Nelson said the charger gets a fair bit of use, besides his own EV.

John Nelson, pastor at the Congregational Church of Salisbury, demonstrates the use of the electric vehicle charger. The charger is part of the recent “net zero” effort at the church. Patrick L. Sullivan

“Judging by the plates, I think we get a lot of summer people and people passing through.”

Nelson sportingly agreed to go outside and demonstrate how to use the charger. It looked remarkably like someone filling a gas tank.

A man walked over from the Scoville Library parking lot and asked about the charger. Soon he and Nelson were deep in a discussion of different apps that keep track of charging stations and how to get an adapter for a Tesla charger.

Asked when the church last paid an electric bill, Nelson said during most of the year, the church generates enough credits with Eversource that there is no bill. (Interestingly, he noted that the church doesn’t use any of the power generated by the solar panels.)

Once winter sets in, the credits run out, and the church gets an electric bill that is a fraction of what they used to spend.