ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Many of Allentown’s aging public schools could be used as the poster child for a $25 million solar power program, officials said Thursday as part of a six-state tour promoting clean energy.
The Climate Action Campaign's Clean Energy REVolution tour stopped at Allentown’s Arts Park, where state and lawmakers hailed the potential impact of the Solar for PA Schools Grant Program.
The program will help schools install solar power by covering half of the costs of those projects.
It also leverages federal funding to cover much of the remaining costs to make expensive upgrades more attainable for school districts.
State Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh, sponsored House Bill 1032, which established the Solar for Schools program.
He said Thursday that some Allentown School District facilities need significant upgrades or more.
“I don’t know about you, but I can't think in 89 degrees, let alone talk about Shakespeare.”State Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh
“We have a desperate need for renovations and for new buildings,” Schlossberg said. “If we can do that in a way that's not only fairly priced but environmentally friendly, we have a win.”
Schlossberg said temperatures inside Harrison-Morton Elementary School, where his wife works, hit 89 degrees Wednesday, just a few degrees cooler than outside, he said.
“There is no universe in which we can expect to educate the next generation ... when we have kids that are sitting in buildings that are 89 degrees,” Schlossberg said.
“I don’t know about you, but I can't think in 89 degrees, let alone talk about Shakespeare.”
Harrison-Morton is the oldest school still being used by Allentown students, he said. It was built in 1874, less than a decade after the end of the Civil War.
Students who attend the school live in some of Allentown’s poorest areas, Schlossberg said.
Climate change "will undeniably touch us all. There is not a wall big enough to get around rising sea levels that will impact our food supply and our ability to sustain life on this planet.”State Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh
Climate change “is a crisis that will hit some of our poorest kids disproportionately,” he said.
“But it will undeniably touch us all. There is not a wall big enough to get around rising sea levels that will impact our food supply and our ability to sustain life on this planet.”
We must 'act boldly and audaciously': Siegel
State Rep. Josh Siegel, D-Lehigh, called climate change “the single greatest existential threat to human existence” and urged elected officials to “act boldly and audaciously” to address its growing effects.
Electrifying all schools across the U.S. with solar energy would be a major step in the right direction, as it would be the equivalent of eliminating 18 coal-fired power plants, Siegel said.
Switching to solar energy would also cut into the millions of absences caused by students struggling with asthma, he said.
Applications will soon open for the $25 million Solar for Schools program.
“We'll certainly do our part as a delegation to make sure as many of those (grant) dollars as possible come back” to Allentown.State Rep. Josh Siegel, D-Lehigh
Siegel said state lawmakers will work to help the Allentown School District secure grants.
“We'll certainly do our part as a delegation to make sure as many of those dollars as possible come back” to Allentown, he said.
“The Allentown School District needs to make every investment that it can,” Siegel said, adding upgrades in energy efficiency are “an opportunity to save potentially millions of dollars.”
The Clean Energy REVolution tour started last month in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with stops in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio before it reached the Keystone State. The tour held events in Erie and State College before Thursday’s stop in Allentown.
It ends in mid-September after stops in Scranton, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
