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Donate to the Climate + Energy Project Annual Giving Campaign!

Authored by: Dorothy Barnett, Executive Director

In 2021 CEP continued to immerse ourselves in the critical work of climate and energy justice, learning more about the connection to environmental and racial justice and the intersection with healthy and resilient communities in Kansas. To reflect this learning, our board adopted a new mission: The Climate + Energy Project (CEP) builds resilience in Kansas through equitable clean energy solutions and climate action. We reflect our mission through four program areas: Clean Energy, Climate Resilience, Policy, and Civic Participation.

Our updated mission reflects our continued commitment to ensure that equitable climate and energy solutions are co-created with impacted communities at the table. Distributed clean energy like rooftop and community owned solar and energy efficiency programs can lessen the energy burden that disproportionately impacts Black and Brown Kansans, who have been more negatively impacted by pollution from our existing energy production. And in 2022, we will be working with our Clean Energy Business Council members to expand distributed generation at the Kansas statehouse and at the Kansas Corporation Commission.

We continue to promote sensible policies that support wind energy while working to counter disinformation – hosting wind energy workshops for the public and elected officials alike. At the end of this year we’ll have 44 wind farms in 32 counties representing nearly 8,000 MW of wind. Kansas is a leader in wind power, thanks to your support.

Our power sector emissions have been reduced by 40% over the past 20 years. And just like wind energy before it, utility scale solar and battery storage can be important renewable energy solutions for municipalities, energy coops, and investor owned utilities alike, unless our ability to be a leader in solar energy is stopped by extremists at the Kansas legislature. In 2022, we anticipate legislation that will stop utility scale renewable energy development across Kansas completely. We need your support to mount a successful defense.

Now is the time to ramp up renewable energy development, not stop it. The most recent report by the IPCC, makes it clear that we will pass 1.5° Celsius in temperature rise by 2040, leading to increased extreme weather events and high temperatures a full decade earlier than the 2018 report predicted.

If we take strong climate action now, we will only hit 1.5°C temporarily, instead of the 3 degrees Celsius scientists now project, based on our current trajectory. In light of the climate crisis we’re facing, we need to add 630 GW of solar photovoltaics annually worldwide by 2030. Kansas can be a clean energy hub and leader in the Midwest! This is equivalent to installing the world’s current largest solar array roughly every day for the next ten years. We can’t get where we need to be without large-scale solar.

The time to act is now and the Climate + Energy Project is taking on all of these issues and more as we work to change the world through equitable clean energy and climate solutions. To continue our work, we need your financial support.  Please give today. You can make a donation online or send a check to PO Box 1858, Hutchinson, KS 67504.