(Radio Iowa) – A report from the U-S Department of Energy found Iowa churches are below the national average for use of renewable energy, though a church in northeast Iowa is helping to change that. Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Decorah is one of just 17 houses of worship in Iowa that uses solar power, according to the report. Jim Fritz has been a member of the congregation for about 30 years and first proposed the idea. He says it started in his own backyard.

“We had also done a lot of solar at our house, and I’d done about all I possibly could, and didn’t feel like I’d done enough,” Fritz says, “so we live two blocks from the church and I thought, ‘Ok, let’s just go down there instead.’” In the past year, the church has devoted itself to switching over to renewable energy. Fritz says three of the church’s rooftop furnaces were failing, and all five were ugly, so the solution was simple.

“You either go back to what you’ve been doing for the last however long and continue to spew emissions,” Fritz says, “or you can do something creative and clean up an eyesore.” The church replaced all five furnaces with 102 solar panels and is now operating at net zero. The switch to solar will allow the church to offset an estimated 25 tons of carbon emissions per year.