According to an announcement by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (an Independent), 10 Vermont schools have been selected by the state to receive $50,000 solar power grants, each as a result of winning renewable energy proposals submitted last year.

The funding, which will come from the U.S. Department of Energy via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA (also known as the stimulus), will help the schools install small-scale solar photovoltaic arrays which – though not large enough to offset a significant amount of each school’s energy use – will nonetheless help schools teach students (and their parents) about the importance of adopting clean energy in the fact of declining fossil fuel reserves worldwide and an increasingly uneasy international energy climate.

As Sanders noted, young people will be the harbingers of this much-sought-after clean and secure energy future, which President Barack Obama expressed as one of his primary goals before his inauguration.

School selections were made by a panel of individuals assembled under the auspices of the Vermont Department of Education. The winning schools are:

• Bellows Free Academy (St. Albans)
• Bradford Elementary School (Bradford)
• Crossett Brook Middle School (Duxbury)
• The Edge Academy / Essex Middle School (Essex Junction)
• Essex Community Education Center (Essex Junction)
• Folsom Education and Community Center (South Hero)
• Hazen Union School (Hardwick)
• South Royalton School (South Royalton)
• Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes (Burlington)
• Woodstock Union Middle/High School (Woodstock)

Of course, the U.S. Department of Energy has still to confirm the awards, but when delivered they will provide each of the above-mentioned schools with solar photovoltaic systems of at least 5 kilowatts each, based on an average national cost of solar energy of about $10,000 per kilowatt installed.

The proposals were judged on how deeply students would be immersed not only in studying the installation phase, but in studying, cataloging and observing the technical, scientific and power-production aspects of the solar arrays, based on updated school curricula.

Sanders, who is chair of the Green Jobs and the New Economy Subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is the only member of the Senate majority to serve on both the energy and environment committees, and was responsible for earmarking the funding for these small-scale solar school projects.