Letter from the President

Friends,

I hope you enjoyed last week’s sunshine and today’s rain is not disturbing your summer plans. Speaking of sunshine, I am incredibly excited to share some great news with you. In the early summer crews installed new solar panels on our roof. This past week, Con Edison and a team from our vendor SunBlue connected that solar array – and while it’s not yet online, we anticipate that it will be just a short time until we are converting photons of sunlight into joules of electricity.

I will let you know more about the system and potential opportunities for you to participate in the benefits, but first I want to take you on a journey about how this came to be. It is a story of creativity, tenacity and tikun olam (repair/improve the world).

Our tale begins nearly 10 years ago, when Marc Karell, who was then chair of WJC’s green committee approached me as chair of the house committee with an audacious plan to “go solar.” After receiving proposals from a number of vendors, we quickly concluded that the panels were not yet efficient or cost-effective enough for WJC to make the investment. Plus, we knew that there were opportunities to reduce our energy usage, and that portions of the roof were aging and would need to be replaced soon.

Soon after those conversations, Marc assumed the chairmanship of the house committee and worked tirelessly to reduce our energy usage. Working with Jose Fonseca and his team, Marc spearheaded an effort to convert fully to LED lighting, installed more efficient furnaces, and converted our air-conditioning to more efficient heat-pumps. The duo even had the foresight to replace that pesky roof with a white surface to reflect even more sunlight into our bi-facial (cells receive light on top and bottom) panels. All those efforts not only helped to protect the environment but also allowed WJC to redirect many thousands of dollars into programs benefitting our members.

Last year Marc teamed up with Michael Stein (who is himself becoming the house committee chair) to get new bids, rerun the numbers and present them to our trustees. Thanks to subsidies available to not-for-profits as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, credits from NYSERDA, as well as an interest free loan from Adamah, it was an easy decision for the trustees to approve. WJC will receive pay back of our investment very quickly.

In case you are curious, our array contains nearly 500 panels and inverters and is expected to generate 95% of WJCs electrical needs – more than 250 megawatt hours of power annually, reducing roughly 60 metric tons of CO2 every year over a 30 year life.

We encourage our members to do their own work for Tikun Olam:

• Members can support WJC and our planet by converting your own home to solar. SunBlue is offering $500 off to congregant families who purchase a system, and will also make a similar donation for each installation.
• Our house committee and green committee have many more projects to do to make WJC greener and always appreciate volunteers. Reach out to me and I will put you in touch.
• Sign up to hear Rabbi Ed Rosenthal from Tikkun HaYam (Repair the Sea ) on Thursday, September 5, and sign up for WJC’s Reverse Tashlich (cleaning the shores of the Long Island Sound) on September 29.
• Lastly, contributions in honor of our green efforts are always appreciated and will go a long way towards encouraging future environmental projects.

Wishing you a bright and fun remainder to the summer,

L’hitraot,
Larry