solar subsidies & solar meadows

One of the biggest impact that can be done on an individual household level is switching energy sources and opting in to renewable energy. Installing solar panels is getting cheaper by the year and quickly pays for itself, on top of being subsidized through government plans in a lot of places. In Philadelphia, thanks to Solarize Philly, you can fill out a form and have a full system installed in less than three months.

It's possible thanks to Inflation Reduction Act, and according to WHYY last summer, "Just under 3% of taxpayers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania claimed the credits." WHYY News Climate Desk "The Philly region is claiming millions in home energy tax credits. Here’s how taxpayers saved"

That means there's 97% of taxpayers who could be benefiting from this but aren't, and there's a chance these incentives won't survive without political support. So if you or anyone you know has a house or building to repair or update, now would be a good time.

It's also something that can be proposed on a city-scale combined with plants for pollinators, like Richmond, VA's plans for a solar meadow. Minnesota was the "first state to incentivize pollinator-friendly ground cover on its solar energy sites" working with the Monarch Joint Venture project to monitor sites.

And more on this later, but pollinators aren't just bees! Bats, moths, flies, and lots of other creatures plus the wind all help plants reproduce, and one of my favorite participatory science programs housed at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris is VigiNature's Spipoll - Suivi photographique des insectes pollinisateurs, where your task is to look at a single flower for 20 minutes and take a picture of every pollinator that swings by. It's fun and they publish collections of the day on their instagram. The coolest bee I've seen now that I'm looking out for them is the Xyclopa violacea (the violet carpenter bee)