GREENFIELD — Greening Greenfield is awarding recent Greenfield High School graduate Jacob Frank a $200 prize for his five-minute video of Carole Collins, Greenfield’s energy and sustainability director, talking about the new solar array that was recently installed on the city’s wellfield.
“Jacob’s concern about climate change, his respect for Carole Collins’ work and his interest in technical details shine in this video,” Nancy Hazard of Greening Greenfield said in a press release. “He asks Collins to share the benefits as well as the challenges that she faced while installing this project on Greenfield’s wellfield — all of which are fascinating.”
According to the release, Frank created the film to support the yearlong project that the Greenfield Environmental Science Club chose last year. As chair of the club, and because of his and other club members’ concern about climate change, they chose to create a website that supports “Cooler Communities,” a school grant program that links classroom learning to climate solutions.
On the website, viewers can explore actions that Greenfield Environmental Science Club members created to inspire community members to reduce carbon emissions from their homes and travel. Frank chose “investing in installing solar panels” as one of his high-priority actions, the release states. He created the video of Collins to support that action as well as to celebrate Greenfield’s efforts to meet all the electric energy needs of its municipal buildings, street lights, and water and sewer systems with zero carbon-emitting electricity.
The solar array Collins discusses in Frank’s video is the second such array that will bring Greenfield to that goal, according to the release. The first system, which is on Greenfield’s capped landfill, provides half of the city’s municipal electric energy. This one will provide 30 percent, while the rest comes from Greenfield Light & Power.
To learn more about the actions on the Greenfield Environmental Science Club’s Cooler Communities website, visit community.massenergize.org/GreenfieldMA. To watch Frank’s video, visit bit.ly/38dadCC.