A Cleaner Energy Future For Everyone Under The Sun

We talk a lot about solar as a way to combat climate change—and for good reason. We’re already seeing the devastation that more extreme weather events around the world are causing as our planet gets warmer. Our dependence on fossil fuels also contributes to another immediate and concrete threat to the natural world, and it's the one that we want to highlight on this year’s International Day for Biological Diversity.

It was recently reported that between 2000 and 2065, Earth will lose more species of plants and animals to extinction than in the previous 65 million years combined. That’s a staggering statistic and one affected immensely by global warming. We have a direct impact on plants and animals when we search for and extract the raw materials used as fossil fuels. That process results in habitat destruction and broken ecosystems in areas not yet touched by climate change. In fact, resource extraction and processing accounts for 90 percent of biodiversity loss, according to the International Resource Panel. Today, with so many of the most accessible sites being tapped for extraction, we’ve moved on to our most unique and vulnerable environments—places of unparalleled natural beauty and biodiversity that we should be fighting every day to save.

That’s one of the many reasons everyone that works at Sunrun is a proponent of solar power and battery storage—because not only does it cut carbon emissions and keep our air clean, it also reduces our need to exploit the resources of Earth. When you choose to go solar, you directly impact plants, animals and ecosystems by limiting the need to search out new areas to dig for fossil fuels. So, while saving our biodiversity may seem a lofty and even an intimidating goal, it’s one that starts on the local level when we decide to go solar.

The Sunrun Green Team