Solar in the least expected places

This week a Hindu statesman eloquently praised the Vatican for having installed a 2,400-panel solar field.

“We may believe in different religions, yet we share the same home—our Earth," Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, said urging all religious leaders to work on environmental issues. "We must learn to happily progress or miserably perish together. For man can live individually but can only survive collectively."

The Vatican's solar panels will cut carbon monoxide by 225 tons and save 80 tons of oil each year, and according to this article, the Vatican is considering building a 740-acre solar panel field north of Rome.

Perhaps all religious leaders should thank the dead for their contribution as well. Their final resting places have become a field of solar panels in Santa Coloma de Gramenet a small but crowded town outside Barcelona, Spain. The town is so crowded that the cemetery was one of the only places they could place the 462 panels, which produce 60 homes' annual use, The Huffington Post reports.

"The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations. That is our leitmotif," said Esteve Serret, director Conste-Live Energy, a Spanish company that runs the cemetery in Santa Coloma and also works in renewable energy.

Photo from freefoto.com.