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Parishioners of St. Francis of Assisi gathered this week to celebrate something their Catholic church now has in common with the Vatican: home-grown solar electricity.

The church arranged for a Durham company to install 216 solar panels on the roof of its fellowship hall. The panels are expected to generate 95,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, enough to light, heat and cool the building and knock $7,000 off its annual power bill.

But saving money wasn t the church s primary goal. As parishioners held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday afternoon, Trevor Thompson, the church s director of justice and peace, cited Pope Francis call to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to reduce climate change and protect God s creation.

He said the climate crisis requires decisive action here and now, and the church is fully committed to playing her part, Thompson said. In this spirit of decisive action, we gather today to celebrate another step our parish is taking to care for our common home.

In 2008, a German company donated 2,400 photovoltaic cells that now cover the massive roof a modern hall near St. Peter s Basilica in Vatican City. The cells installed on the roof of Clare Fellowship Hall at St. Francis of Assisi belong to Eagle Solar Light in Durham.

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The church is leasing the panels from the company for 15 years, through an arrangement made possible by a bill approved by the General Assembly in 2017 to encourage the use of solar energy. The bill also created a rebate program to help finance solar systems, and Duke Energy will send the church $62,000 to help cover installation costs.

Leasing the system instead of buying it meant the church doesn t need to worry about paying for the equipment or taking care of it, said Rob Neppel, director of finance and planning.

We re not electricians. We re not solar experts, Neppel said. It takes a lot of the burden off us. We get the benefit of it without out having to do a lot of maintenance.

Neppel said after making its monthly lease payments, the church stands to come out ahead on energy costs somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000 a year. After 15 years, the church will have the option of buying the equipment or extending the lease.

Eagle Solar Light has made similar lease arrangements with other churches, including St. Andrew s Episcopal in Greensboro and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh off Wade Avenue.

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Established in 1982, St. Francis of Assisi church has always tried to follow the example of its namesake, who saw God reflected in nature and was named the patron saint of ecology in 1979. The parish developed its campus off Leesville Road to preserve natural areas and use as little energy and water as possible, Thompson said.

St. Francis of Assisi reached out to several non-Catholic churches that had gone solar to learn about their experiences and consulted with N.C. Interfaith Power and Light, a climate change initiative of the N.C. Council of Churches. It hopes to inspire other churches to follow suit.

We have ample supply of energy from the sun in this part of North Carolina, and it makes sense that churches like ours are taking this action to put our Catholic values into practice, Thompson said.

Eagle Solar Light estimates the panels will produce about 4,400 kilowatt hours in December, when the sun is lowest in the sky, and more than 10,000 kilowatt hours a month in late spring and early summer, when the sun is overhead and days are longer, according to Scott Alexander, the company s regional director.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the annual savings of 95,000 kilowatt hours will mean 74 fewer tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere, or the same as not burning 7,558 gallons of gasoline.

The system doesn t have a battery, Alexander said, so electricity that isn t used at the fellowship hall goes back on the grid. Duke Energy will subtract the value of that electricity from the bill for power the utility provides to the hall in the evening or when the sun isn t shining.