BUTLER TWP — Butler County residents gathered Saturday at Alameda Park to advocate for clean energy.

Marcellus Outreach Butler, a group dedicated to raising awareness of the dangers of hydraulic fracking for natural gas, hosted the fossil-free energy fair.

Patricia DeMarco, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has studied the environmental effects of energy, was the keynote speaker.

“We're putting forward the argument that we have to stand for the future generations and the other living things on the Earth that cannot speak,” DeMarco said of the purpose of the fair.

DeMarco focused on ways people can remove institutional barriers put in place by the government and companies that prevent sustainability.

“The trajectory of our fossil energy is nonsustainable, it is destroying the life support system we have on Earth,” she said. “It has been stable for 10,000 years or more, and we are now destabilizing it by accelerating combustion of fossil fuels.”

“We need to go on a path forward and use our technology and our resources to shift to a nonfossil economy.”

DeMarco spoke of the problems with modern energy use, citing the inefficiency and pollution of our most common energy sources as major causes for concern.

She emphasized that there are much better alternatives that lay outside the mainstream energy use that need to be explored.

“We need to replace the 1800s technology we use for generating electricity,” she said. “We are currently wasting more energy than we use. And we have technology that can reverse that but we choose not to use it.”

“This does not require space-age innovation. We can do it now.”

Two representatives from Slippery Rock University were on hand to present how the school uses and teaches sustainable technologies.

“Sustainability really permeates to everything we do,” said Paul Scanlon, the sustainability coordinator at the university. “Even though our campus is growing in size, we've been reducing our energy usage.”

John Golden, a business professor at the university, said one of the big sustainable projects SRU is working on right now is a shared commercial kitchen.

The commercial kitchen would allow a variety of people to use it to create their food products, Golden said, adding it would allow for spread of locally grown food to both campus and the surrounding areas.

“One of the things we're big on is local foods,” Golden said. “And what we've found is we, in the Butler County area, have a large supply of locally grown, healthy food.”

“And we have a larger demand in the Pittsburgh market for local and organic food.

Scanlon and Golden also discussed the importance of teaching sustainability and preparing students for “green” jobs.

“We take on the responsibility of how we're going to prepare our students for jobs in the green economy,” Golden said.

Golden said it is important for students to realize the importance of sustainability in the business world.

The university now has a major in the business department dedicated to sustainability and has a Sustainable Enterprise Accelerator program that helps students start sustainable businesses.

“We adhere to the triple bottom line,” Golden said. “We believe that businesses have to make profit, but we also understand there is a balance. Businesses make profits, not in spite of sustainability, but because of it.”

Other speakers at the event included Kirsi Jansa, an independent filmmaker specializing in sustainability films, Marcia Lehman, the owner of an energy consulting business out of Ambridge, and Stephen Cleghorn, the owner of the first USDA certified farm in Jefferson County.

Several vendors also had displays and offered advice on a number of sustainable energy options. There were electric bikes, solar panels, and even generators that ran on recycled restaurant deep fryer grease.

The event, which featured live music and hot dogs, was all done with the power of fossil-free energy.