It is puzzling and discouraging to me that the Harwood School Board has rejected the offer to have an electric vehicle charging station installed on-site at no cost to the school. Harwood made a great statement a few years back when they installed a wood chip boiler for their heating needs. This opportunity needs to be viewed in the same light. A recent Union of Concerned Scientists study found that, even in situations where electricity is generated by fossil fuels, “gas-powered cars spew out almost twice as much global warming pollution than the equivalent electric car.” (And as an electric vehicle driver myself, I would add that EVs offer superior performance and are far less expensive to drive.)
Not only do projects like this make sense for the school, they also raise the public’s and the student body’s awareness about where we source our energy. As we move beyond fossil fuels (something the state of Vermont is officially committed to), it will take outside-the-box thinking on the part of every citizen to reach that goal. Today’s Harwood students will undoubtedly be grappling with these issues in the coming decades and the school board should take advantage of every opportunity they have to lead by example.
Furthermore, I can think of many ways that an on-site charging station could become a teaching tool in many subjects including math, science and various branches of the social sciences. (Perhaps the recent rejection of the proposal could be part of a psychology lesson!) Washington Electric Co-op has come twice to the board offering to install this charging station. This is like having two slow pitches lobbed right over the plate only to watch them sail by as strikes. Fortunately for the board and the community, that wasn’t the third strike. WEC is going to lob one more pitch right over the plate. This time I’m counting on the board to hit it out of the park.
Randy George
Moretown
