High School Curriculum: The Benefits of Renewable Energy

At the 2019 WV Science Teachers Association Conference, retired school teacher Randi Pokladnik, PhD, presented three curricula for high school teachers to use in their classrooms:

• Climate Change: The Science and Solutions;
• The Benefits of Renewable Energy; and
• Fracking, Cracker Plants, Plastics, and You.

More energy from the sun strikes the earth in an hour than all of humanity uses in a year!

Renewable energy technology for solar and wind power has made enormous strides in the past twenty-five years. Prices of solar energy have dropped to $0.75 a watt today and wind farms being built in the mid-western states are now cheaper to construct and operate than gas power plants.

The average wind turbine installed in 2014 generates about 17 times more electricity than one from 1990. Renewable energy is now within the budget of most citizens and wind turbine technicians were the fastest growing job in the USA adding 25,000 jobs last year. Whether in the form of rooftop solar systems, community solar, solar water heating or small-scale and large-scale wind turbines, renewable energy is affordable and a better choice for the environment, as this lesson plan explores. 

A pdf of The Benefits of Renewable Energy is below, along with supporting materials, which you may download to use in your classroom, no matter where you are. Find the Climate Change: The Science and Solutions lesson plan here. Find Fracking, Cracker Plants, Plastics, and You at this link.  

If you would like the PowerPoint version of The Benefits of Renewable Energy shared with you via Google Drive, please e-mail info@ohvec.org.

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Below please find some support resources. 

Also see’s NEED’s free Exploring Photovoltaics Teacher Guide, available at a link here.