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Vatican gets virtuous
13th December 2008
Holy See to become the world's first carbon neutral sovereign state
The new array of solar panels lining the Paul VI Audience Hall (a.k.a. Nervi Hall) in the State of the Vatican City have been switched on, two months after construction began on replacing the 40-year-old roof tiles. The 2,400 panels covering 5,000 square metres will provide the hall and surrounding buildings with 300,000 kilowatt-hours a year of electricity – enough to save more than 70 tonnes of oil and 200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
Aiming to generate 20 per cent of its energy needs from renewables by 2020 (in line with European Union targets), the Holy See may put solar panels on other buildings (although not on any significant historical sites, such as St. Peter’s Basilica). Plans are under way for a solar-power plant on Vatican-owned land north of Rome, which would feed electricity into the Italian grid.
Pope Benedict XVI – dubbed by some “the green pope” – stated on World Youth Day this summer in Australia that humanity needs to stop “squandering the world’s mineral and ocean resources to fuel [our] insatiable consumption.” He also has suggested that Catholics cut down on carbon use for Lent and listed “polluting the environment” among a suite of seven new “social sins.”
Work has recently begun on the Vatican Climate Forest, with more than 100,000 willow, oak, poplar and fruit trees to be planted on 240 hectares of land in Hungary. The forest is intended to offset the more than 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that the Vatican City emits annually – potentially making it the world’s first carbon-neutral sovereign state.
Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail
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