By Amethyst Holmes for Religion News Service.
Broadcast version by Brett Peveto for Maryland News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

As more drivers make the decision to switch from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, places to power them remain few and far between in large parts of the country. And with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 incentivizing clean energy and electric cars, as well as providing investments for green technology, the demand will only increase.

Churches, with their large parking lots that often sit empty during the week, could help provide a solution.

Houses of worship exist in every community and are usually centrally located, making them ideal partners for expanding EV access, according to Andrew Fox, chairman and CEO of Charge Enterprises Inc., which specializes in electricity and communications infrastructure.

It’s why the company has chosen to partner with the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church to install EV charging stations on church campuses throughout the D.C. region.

Churches “tend to be centrally located, and they offer plenty of access. Sundays might be the most challenging time to charge at a church; however, the rest of the week likely offers plenty of opportunity,” said Fox in a recent press release announcing the partnership.

BWC’s treasurer, Paul Eichelberger, said that as drivers continue to make the switch to electric vehicles, churches can make a significant impact by installing stations in rural and urban areas to meet growing community needs and to serve neighbors outside the church walls.

“They start thinking about what ministries they might be able to bring to somebody who’s sitting in their parking lot for 15 minutes charging their car,” Eichelberger said. 

Charge Enterprises and the BWC are still determining where to install EV stations among the more than 600 churches within the conference. More than 100,000 EVs are registered throughout the D.C. region and, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation, more than 60,000 EVs are registered across the state. 

Churches in other major metropolitan areas across the country have started offering similar services to their neighborhoods.

The Rev. Catherine Healy, rector of St. Paul & the Redeemer Episcopal Church in Chicago, partnered with a local nonprofit, Community Charging, to provide an accessible and affordable charging station on the city’s South Side. She says the charging station is still the only publicly available one in the area outside of chargers in private parking garages.

“We are in a position where we can provide a service that no one else is providing and that seems really valuable to us,” Healy said.“Almost instantly it started getting near daily use.”

The charging station serves as a small revenue generator for the church, which charges $0.15 per kilowatt hour, averaging a $40 profit a month. But, Healy said, its real purpose is as a physical representation of the church’s commitment to environmental stewardship and caring for people in the neighborhood. In addition to the station, the church made the switch to LED lighting inside the building and hosts community discussions on energy efficiency.

“A lot of people were curious about this new gadget in the parking lot, so it’s opened up possibilities for talking with people about electric vehicles and the larger environmental pros and cons of EVs replacing fossil fuels,” Healy said.

For Jonathan Lacock-Nisly, the director of faithful advocacy for the D.C.-area chapter of Interfaith Power and Light, installing charging stations is one action among many that churches can do as the country works to shift toward cleaner transportation. Interfaith Power and Light, a national nonprofit that helps churches respond to climate change, also encourages congregations to minimize their carbon footprint through energy saving efforts like switching from gas to electric home appliances.

He also sees these efforts, along with local advocacy work for clean infrastructure, as tangible expressions of faith that church leaders can rally their congregations around, especially younger generations who are eager to see a decrease in dependency on fossil fuels. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that the majority of millennials and Gen Z populations are in favor of phasing out gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

“These individual actions are not just an important representation of our values, but are a building block to the collective action we need for larger change,” Lacock-Nisly said.


Amethyst Holmes wrote this article for Religion News Service.


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The Trump administration's long-term plan for artificial intelligence could have far-reaching environmental impacts across the country.

His strategy calls for the removal of land use rules considered prohibitive to the construction of AI data centers. Last year, then Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Microsoft would invest $1 billion to establish a new AI data center in Laporte to generate cloud computing infrastructure.

Ben Murray, senior researcher for the advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said fossil fuel plants are already being reopened to help meet high energy demands.

"We just need to be aware that anything that prolongs our reliance on fossil fuel is going to increase the problems that we're seeing from the climate crisis," Murray explained.

Murray argued high-tech progress should not come at the expense of increased household energy prices. Residents' support is low due to concerns about increased traffic and noise near the centers. The Trump administration said environmental and permitting regulations will only slow America's dominance in the AI field.

A report last year found emissions from data centers owned by Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft were more than seven times higher than officially reported. Computer servers using AI require far more energy than those without. A ChatGPT query, for example, can use up to 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search.

"These companies can seem as if they're decreasing their emissions and meeting net-zero goals but in reality, the emissions are amping up faster than ever for these companies," Murray pointed out.

Murray noted the push for more data centers is already leading Big Tech companies to backtrack on their climate goals. It is possible to power AI services with renewable energy sources, he added, but doing so requires political will.

As of June 2025, a 1,200-acre corn and soybean field just outside of New Carlisle has turned into eight Amazon-led AI energy centers. The tech giant plans to construct a total of 30 at the site.


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After one year, Washington's first comprehensive bee survey has documented 15 species that have never been collected in the state before.

The project is cataloguing native bees, which includes nearly all species in the state, but excludes honeybees.

Karla Salp is a communications consultant with the Washington State Department of Agriculture's Washington Bee Atlas program, which conducted the survey.

She said the data will serve as a baseline to track bee populations.

"The reason why this is happening in the first place is to answer the question, how are pollinators doing in Washington state?" said Salp. "And the answer is we don't know, because we've never actually looked at even what bees we have throughout the state."

Salp said the project also involves compiling a list of plants that each bee species pollinates so residents can make their yards more attractive to these beneficial insects.

As honeybee numbers continue to decline rapidly, Salp explained that native pollinators may become more important to Washington's agriculture.

"Knowing what native pollinators we have and how we can support them is really a sustainability issue" said Salp, "to make sure that whether we have honeybees here or not, there are options for pollination."

Volunteers collected over 17,000 bees on more than 600 different host plants.

Salp said the process of identifying them is slow because each one must be viewed under a microscope, and there is still considerable work to be done.

"We're expecting to find a lot more species" said Salp, "that are either rare or even new to the state. "

If people are interested in volunteering, an online application for the Bee Atlas program is available on the Washington State Department of Agriculture website.




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The Trump administration wants to overturn a conservation rule that had garnered more public comment than any in U.S. history up until that time.

Commonly known as the Roadless Rule, the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulation prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvesting on nearly 60 million acres of national forest land.

Sarah McMillan - the senior attorney and director of the Wildlands & Wildlife Program at the Western Environmental Law Center - said before it was adopted in 2001, 1.5 million people submitted comments, with the vast majority in support of the rule.

"This was a rule that was carefully, thoughtfully developed," said McMillan. "There was a long process of inventorying these roadless areas and identifying these remote, often mature and old-growth trees. This didn't happen overnight."

A rollback of the rule would allow more logging and drilling on federal lands, which McMillan said would worsen climate change, harm wildlife & vital ecosystems, jeopardize water quality, and negatively affect recreational opportunities.

The Bush administration attempted to repeal the Roadless Rule in 2005, but lost in the courts.

In announcing the proposed rollback, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed more logging would improve forest management, which would in turn decrease forest fires.

But McMillan said that argument is disputed in a 2020 Wilderness Society study that found just the opposite.

"The truth is, un-roaded areas burn at a significantly lower rate than areas with roads," said McMillan. "So, fires start near roads."

McMillan said it doesn't make sense to allow private developers to log more trees when the planet is undergoing a biodiversity and climate crisis - especially because old-growth trees create a buffer against climate change.

Forests cover almost 30% of New Mexico's land area.




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