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“Our hope is that we might be able to grow while providing a certain level of love and care for our neighbors.”
Established 125 years ago in the Crafton Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh’s West End, First United Presbyterian Church of Crafton Heights (CHUP) gathers about 80 neighborhood congregants under its solar-powered roof every Sunday morning, and includes about 30 middle- and high-schoolers in its popular youth group on Sunday nights.
Also the pioneer of a neighborhood drop-in youth program called the Open Door, CHUP offers mentoring and relationship-building services for local kids and teens, and not just those who belong to the congregation. In addition, the church sponsors a local summer camp, the Crafton Heights Community Preschool which offers high-quality, low-cost early childhood education, and a number of food distribution and meal services for neighborhood residents.
Practicing the stewardship they preach:
2025: Replaced gas boiler with higher efficiency model.
2023: Replaced church building roof and added solar array.
Previously: Replaced leaky old windows.
Next up: Preserving and sealing stained glass.
Solar Project Savings: $5,000 Annually
With such a large proportion of their congregation and community still in school – and always looking expectantly towards tomorrow – Pastor Dave Carver says that CHUP never ceases to consider the future, especially in its day-to-day operational decisions. In fact, CHUP does everything in its power to make the future as healthy and vibrant for its young people as possible.
“Our hope is that we might be able to grow while providing a certain level of love and care for our neighbors,” said Pastor Carver. “We want to be instruments of what we perceive to be God's work in the world – towards justice, towards peace, towards wholeness, towards reconciliation.”
It was with this consideration in mind that CHUP decided to go solar in 2024, with the help of local solar company EIS Solar.
Like much of Pittsburgh, the Crafton Heights neighborhood has long faced some socioeconomic challenges, as it is located in a community that has a history of industrial pollution and fossil-fuel dependence. Over the years, Pastor Carver noticed that some of CHUP’s young people seem to bear the brunt of the area’s poor air quality – often showing up on Sundays with asthma or other breathing conditions.
As it turns out, the United States government has a term for this kind of neighborhood – “an energy community.” And under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, energy communities qualify for a 10 percent tax credit for renewable energy projects, on top of the standard 30 percent renewable energy tax credit that has been around in one iteration or another since 2005. (That tax credit is now set to expire for projects that have not begun construction by July 2026.)
For CHUP, this combined 40 percent tax credit would equate to $19,200 towards the installation of a 16.2 kilowatt solar array on the church’s roof. And that powerful incentive facilitated reducing the church’s electric bills by 70 percent.
CHUP, which once paid about $6,600 a year on electric bills, now pays less than $2,000 a year thanks to its new solar system. This frees up nearly $5,000 a year to reinvest into the people and community that the church serves.
"As you look at the new reality for churches, particularly small inner city churches in North America, sustainability is going to be a huge factor.”
Perhaps more importantly for the health of the young people of the congregation, the solar array has reduced CHUP’s carbon footprint by more than 57,000 pounds of CO2 emissions, which is about the same amount of carbon absorbed by 30 acres of US forest in one year.
CHUP hasn’t stopped at going solar. The church has also invested in energy efficiency. In 2025, CHUP replaced their old boiler with a high-efficiency unit. (“Perhaps one day they'll replace me with a high-efficiency unit,” joked Pastor Carver.) 15 years before that, CHUP replaced a number of the church’s windows that had been leaking temperature-controlled air. And this year, CHUP has plans to refurbish and replace some of their original stained glass windows, which are more than 100 years old, as a way to further preserve CHUP’s energy stores.
“As you look at the new reality for churches, particularly small inner city churches in North America, sustainability is going to be a huge factor,” said Pastor Carver. “So if we can spend less money on keeping our doors open, we can keep our doors open longer.”
Keeping the doors open means CHUP can further provide encouragement and support to the community through their own preschool, Open Door youth mentoring program, and other services, which are helping countless young people in and around Crafton Heights to create a bright future.
