Sister Paula González, S.C., Ph.D., (October 25, 1932 - July 31, 2016) entered the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati in 1954. She earned her doctorate in biology at the Catholic University in Washington, DC, and was a biology professor at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio, for 21 years.[1]
Since 1972, Sister Paula has been freelancing as a futurist and environmentalist, working for more than three decades to promote sustainable living. She supported the work of the Alternate Energy Association of Southwestern Ohio, including serving as president for a while. She has developed audiotape courses in Earth-healing; has written several articles and book chapters on ecospirituality, conservation, renewable energy, and spiritual ecology; and has reached thousands in person by giving over 1800 presentations.
Sister Paula designed and did much of the work of converting a former chicken barn into "La Casa del Sol," a 1200square feet super-insulated, passive-solar house she shares with another Sister of Charity. When the temperature dropped below zero in the winter of 1985, the home temperature dropped to no lower than 50 degrees without any heater running. Sister Paula's success with solar energy earned her the nickname "Solar Nun."
Sister Paula founded EarthConnection, an environmental learning center where tours, internships, and environmental educational programs have been conducted. Located on the grounds of her congregation’s motherhouse, the EarthConnection Center was completed in 1995 and continues to showcase various renewable-energy technologies including daylighting, passive and active solar thermal, grid-tied photovoltaic, and geoexchange energy systems. The systems are not only impressive in their variety, but also notable for the unusual "solar-assisted geothermal" configuration, where summer heat is transferred from solar thermal collectors to an insulated bed of earth around the building for use the following winter.
The American Solar Energy Society's Ohio Chapter, Green Energy Ohio, gave Sister Paula their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
In 2007, Sister Paula and Keith Mills founded Ohio Interfaith Power and Light, a coalition of religious people responding to the climate-change crisis. Ohio Interfaith Power and Light is an affiliate of The Regeneration Project's national Interfaith Power and Light campaign, which has programs in 26 states involving over 4000 congregations (as of May 2008).