Kristen Harper, Unitarian Church of Barnstable, Massachusetts

Rev. Dr. Kristen L. Harper is the Senior Minister at the Unitarian Church of Barnstable where they recent installed solar panels and heat pumps.

Why did you decide to utilize clean energy? Because we feel a responsibility to help address climate change and to be more energy efficient. You know, we would like to live more in harmony with nature as opposed to against it and we want to lower our carbon footprint.

What was the transition to clean energy like for you? Did anything surprise you, or were there challenges you had to overcome? I don't think we really had many challenges. Once we decided to do it, we just went ahead. So you know, there was a group of people who said, we're going to fund the panels and you find a good company to work with. Our building operations committee found a good company and our green sanctuary committee would play the lead and finding us a company and we worked with them and they were amazing.

What advice do you have for people considering taking the leap to clean energy? You know, the thing is, if the congregation is behind it, or if a group is behind it, that's what you need. You need the people to be behind. It. And then once they're behind that, people give what they can. But what really got people motivated was the idea that we could do it together and that we were doing it for each other and for the earth.

How has using clean energy affected your finances? There was a huge impact financially, particularly with the solar panels. So that was wonderful and we use heating pumps, which has cut down tremendously on our heating bills and energy use.