La Crosse County announces its solar future
LA CROSSE, Wis. (WLAX/WEUX) – La Crosse is working to reduce the amount of harmful emissions that are released into the air. First News at Nine’s Dashal Mentzel explains how they are doing it by going solar.
La Crosse is moving through steps on their Climate Action Plan. The plan began in 2019. Over the years the focus of the plans has changed to whatever topic is currently most needed to be focused on. La Crosse County Planner, Dillon Constant, says “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, surveys and such and, sustainability was identified as one of the core values of the community.”
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 Building, “There’s about 255kw of the total 740kw going at the law enforcement center right now. It should be a few weeks yet before those go online.”
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, carbon-based fuels that are very harmful to the atmosphere and contribute to the greenhouse gas effect, which really just increases global warming.”
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.”
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. In La Crosse, Dashal Mentzel First News at Nine. La Crosse County will be holding an open house on Wednesday (5/22/24) at Farmington Town Hall at 6:30 pm, giving community members the opportunity to voice their opinions about the plan.
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