Parents for solar schools: urge election candidates to promote solar

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On a mission to act on climate change for kids and students in school, Australian Parents for Climate Action (AP4CA) is getting parents to advocate for climate change. Parents are urging the political parties to support AP4CA’s initiative- Solar Our Schools.

The not-for-profit organization- AP4CA is on its mission to bring together all parents, grandparents, and families to become active citizens to promote climate action. Their ongoing campaign, Solar Our Schools, is an initiative to ensure a decent future for the coming generations.

The campaign entails payments for solar panels and batteries to be put at all schools across Australia. This is as per Beyond Zero Emissions’ Million Jobs Plan. According to AP4CA, the initiative will create 7,000 renewable energy jobs in Australia, allow 4,000 extra teaching jobs to be created through energy bill savings, and prevent 1.38 million tonnes of carbon emissions every year. As of now, more than 12,000 parents have joined the campaign.

Approaching the candidates

AP4CA is helping parents to put pressure on the candidates for climate action. One way is by sending an email to the candidate of the parent’s locality. This can be done through a tool where the text can be edited as per requirement and the emails could also be targeted based on specific criteria.

With the help of the National Solar Schools Program(NSSP), many schools now have solar installed, but there is still a large chunk of schools that remain without solar. Some systems are small as per present standards and many lack batteries.

Schools have high electricity consumption and because of large rooftop spaces, installing solar is quite relevant. Sometimes schools do not have the ownership of solar installations, in this case, Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) can be made with third-party installers. They own, operate, and sell electricity to the schools at a much cheaper rate in comparison to the conventional grid tariffs.