Sam Norton
A&E Editor
Over the past nine years, the solar industry has averaged a growth rate of 40 percent per year and has a projected growth rate of 26 percent annually in the coming years. But this growth in the solar industry has impacted more than just the economy; rather, it has changed the way we view sustainability and the decisions we make towards achieving it.
Yet it is not only the solar industry that is changing the way we view energy, but also Keene State College’s Campus Ecology. This organization shows that all it takes is a little bit of sunshine to make environmentally conscious decisions. On Saturday, April 27, the club put on this year’s Solar Festival on Oya Hill.
Molly Alderman-Person, public relations for Campus Ecology, said that this year the club had a budget of $13,000 to put on the festival. This year’s event featured a total of five headline bands and eight “tweener” bands. In addition to the musicians who performed, local organizations and vendors also debuted their work at the festival. According to Donald Pearson of Strangers Helping Strangers, the organization, which has been around since 1995, will be donating all of the canned goods they receive from the event to the Keene Community Kitchen. Since 2009, Strangers Helping Strangers has been attending KSC’s Solar Festival, Pearson said.
However, this year’s event was not only an opportunity to give back to the Keene community, but also a way to change how solar energy is viewed. Curtis Butler, of KSC’s SPDI club, said the club, which also helped organize Solar Fest with Campus Ecology, saw the event as a way to show how we can be sustainable—as a result, Butler was able to showcase a total of six hybrid cars on-campus during the festival.
“There’s an image that people place on Solar Fest as being a ‘hippie fest’ when it really is much more than that,” Butler said, “I wanted Solar Fest to be a way to look at future technologies.”
