By Rev Richenda Fairhurst
Disaster Ministries brought some important new equipment to General Conference this week—a car/truck trailer equipped with solar panels, chargers, cables, and batteries—all designed to bring comfort and aid to those affected when a natural disaster strikes.
This new trailer is ready to be replicated and deployed. The hope is that using solar trailers will give conferences and churches an essential mobile relief center in the face of the worsening storms of the climate crisis. The trailer is complete and provides clean, sustainable solar and battery technology. It can be run independently in places where it is most needed, as it generates not only its own power, but power also for first responders and communities impacted by wildfire, hurricane, tornado, heat wave, or other emergency.
In bringing it to General Conference, Rev. Jonathan Brake, Program Manager for Environmental sustainability, conference goers have a chance to get a hands-on introduction. Says Brake, “When you get to step right up to a solar array, walk through the trailer to learn how it works, and then see how it powers tools and computers, recharges batteries, cooks and refrigerates, runs medical equipment, lights up a work area, plus anything else that uses electricity, for most people the concept instantly becomes reality.”
Jenny Phillips, Director of Environmental Stability at the General Board of Global Ministries, explains the project, “In the past, disaster responders needed to use noisy, polluting, fuel-powered generators to provide crucial energy for communities in need. Now they have another option—solar generators that are clean, quiet, and safe. We know that extreme weather events that cause disasters are exacerbated by fossil fuel-driven climate change.”
Along with the other improvements to disaster response that the solar trailer brings, Rev. Phillips also shares how, in using clean energy to support their efforts, Global Ministries is taking yet another step toward meeting netzero goals for its own ministries.
The solar trailer project lights the way for more trailers that could be available to bring clean, renewable power as part of the church’s care for people harmed by disaster and do so in a way that cares for the environment. Explains Brake, “This solar mini-grid trailer is a tangible example of The United Methodist Church’s commitment to creation care and environmental stewardship and represents how general agencies of The United Methodist Church are leaning into their pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 across ministries, facilities, operations, and investments.”
These are the kind of projects The United Methodist Church can develop as it renews itself as a church, gets realistic about the needs of a world changed by the climate crisis, and does what it knows how to do—help people in times of what may be their greatest need following a wildfire, cyclone, or other disaster.