La Crosse County adds solar panels to Law Enforcement Center - WEAU
La Crosse County adds solar panels to Law Enforcement Center
LA CROSSE, Wis. (WEAU) - La Crosse is moving through steps on their Climate Action Plan. The plan began in 2019. Over the years the focus of the plans have changed to whatever topic is currently most needed to be focused on.
“It was really focused on waste reduction back then and pollution reduction. Now it’s more about decarbonizing and reducing our energy consumption. When we did our comprehensive plan update in 2022, we did a series of public engagement events and surveys. Sustainability was identified as one of the core values of the community,” says La Crosse County planner, Dillon Constant.
Constant says part of the Climate Action Plan is to place solar panels on six county properties. Panels are currently being set up on the roof of the La Crosse County Courthouse and Law Enforcement Center.
“There’s about 255 kilowatts of the total 740killowatts going at the Law Enforcement Center right now. It should be a few weeks yet before those go online,” says Constant.
Carbon neutrality is when a community offsets as many emissions as they are generating. Constant says the plan is for La Crosse to hit carbon neutrality by 2050.
“Right now a lot of our building energy is generated from coal and carbon based fuels that are very harmful to the atmosphere and contribute to the greenhouse gas effect, which increases global warming,” says Constant.
La Crosse County is choosing solar panels to help with the project because a lot of the carbon released into the air can be reduced by generating power using solar energy.
“A big part of our total carbon footprint is our buildings and our energy use in our buildings. So increasing the efficiency of our buildings and transitioning to fuel sources that don’t generate or emit carbon like solar panels, we can subtract that from our footprint to get closer to our objective of carbon neutrality,” says Constant.
Constant says solar should be online at the Law Enforcement Center as well as the County Administrative Center and other locations by the end of the year.
La Crosse County will be holding an open house on Wednesday at Farmington Town Hall at 6:30 p.m., giving community members the opportunity to voice their opinions about the plan.
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