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Churches want to save energy - and recommend hot-water bottles and tea during services

2022-11-24T12:44:03.162Z


Churches want to save energy - and recommend hot-water bottles and tea during services Created: 11/24/2022 13:31 By: Nadja Zinsmeister Christmas Eve could be uncomfortable in some churches this year. (symbol photo) © Maurizio Gambarini/dpa Christmas Eve service could be a chilly affair this year. Many churches are supposed to save energy and therefore do without heating. Munich - For many peo


Churches want to save energy - and recommend hot-water bottles and tea during services

Created: 11/24/2022 13:31

By: Nadja Zinsmeister

Christmas Eve could be uncomfortable in some churches this year.

(symbol photo) © Maurizio Gambarini/dpa

Christmas Eve service could be a chilly affair this year.

Many churches are supposed to save energy and therefore do without heating.

Munich - For many people, this year's Christmas service could be a cold undertaking.

In the midst of the energy crisis, the churches must also start saving.

As a survey by the German Press Agency has shown, many Catholic dioceses and Protestant regional churches are advising their congregations not to heat their churches at all or to reduce the temperature.

Churches want to save energy - and recommend hot-water bottles and tea during services

A temperature of ten degrees Celsius has always been usual in churches.

But with regard to the high energy and electricity costs, the congregations can save a lot of money if they no longer heat their places of worship as much.

According to several handouts, ten percent savings would be achieved for every degree of temperature reduction - depending on the size of the church, that is between 1,000 and 30,000 kilowatt hours of energy per year and degree.

A calculation by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany shows what that means in concrete terms: if the temperature in all of their 1,900 churches were lowered by one degree with natural gas or oil heating, annual cost savings totaling 240,000 euros would be possible.

Damage to inventory such as church organs is not to be expected due to the low temperatures, many of the responses to the survey said.

Blankets for believers lie on the seats in a church.

(staged scene) © Sebastian Gollnow/dpa

In order to make church services enjoyable for people despite the cold temperatures, many congregations are now resorting to new means: they are asking people to bring a hot-water bottle or a blanket to church services.

Even hot tea is now often allowed.

In many places, however, blankets would also be offered on site.

Some churches have heated seat cushions on the pews.

According to the Archdiocese of Cologne, if you use these instead of air heating, you can save about 95 percent of the energy.

In addition to colder temperatures, many people also have to adjust to less lighting in their church.

In many places, savings are to be made on outdoor lighting and churches are no longer to be illuminated.

"The notion that churches would be overloaded with Christmas decorations at Christmas time is also exaggerated," says the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Berlin.

"It is not a church custom to decorate everything with numerous fairy lights during the Advent season."

(

nz/dpa

)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-11-24

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