There’s been a lot of buzz about our eco-friendly pope, and now the Vatican is poised to make a little bit of history with solar power:

A German solar company has given Pope Benedict XVI something special for Christmas: an electricity-generating solar rooftop for the Vatican’s Paul VI audience hall.

The Bonn-based SolarWorld is donating approximately 2,000 solar modules to be installed on the audience hall roof to provide “the very first solar power ever generated in the Vatican,” said a company press release.

The solar system will produce some 315,500 kilowatt-hours of power a year, offsetting some 315 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, it said. Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases that trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere and is seen as a major cause of global warming.

DGAP News, an online German financial media outlet, distributed the press release Jan. 4. A SolarWorld press officer confirmed the statement with Catholic News Service.

The press release said executives at SolarWorld had read reports over the summer that the Vatican was planning to cool and heat its large Paul VI audience hall with solar panels.

The company’s CEO, Frank Asbeck, contacted the Vatican and offered to provide the solar project as a gift, according to the Jan. 4 statement.

“With our gift we are paying tribute to the German pope. We support the commitment of the Catholic Church to a responsible use of the resources of creation,” Asbeck said in the statement.

The company says the Vatican recently accepted the gift on behalf of the pope.

Asbeck said making the donation was “an obvious thing to do because Pope Benedict had lived in our Bad Godesberg Rhine quarter during his time in Bonn. We therefore feel very closely attached to him.”