A new construction project is underway at the White House, and it’s not a new bedroom for dignitaries or improvements to the bowling alley. It’s a fresh new set of solar panels. It’s unclear how much power the new array will actually produce, but for many, the act delivers more than electricity.

Despite the fact that it took Obama three years to fulfill his promise to restore the array, the seemingly small move is a big step, and says a lot about where we’re headed as a nation.

Nothing New Under The Sun

I often feel bad for former President Jimmy Carter. He’s always the butt of jokes, especially from conservatives, and criticized for his passive demeanor. Yet more than 30 years ago, Carter was championing solar power, and encouraging Americans to abandon fossil fuels for the promise of renewable energy. He walked the talk, putting 32 solar panels on the roof of the White House way back in 1979. What a different America–no, world–we’d be living in now if we’d only taken the hint and put our weight behind the solar energy industry back then.

But we didn’t. Instead, the oil lobby put its weight into our politicians, and in 1986, then-President Reagan had the panels removed. George Charles Szego, the engineer who persuaded Carter to install the solar panels, reportedly claimed that Reagan Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan “felt that the equipment was just a joke, and he had it taken down.”

Well, it wasn’t a joke. And now solar energy (along with wind and geothermal) represents one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States. Too bad we had to force the planet way over the C02 threshold and into human-accelerated climate change before we were willing to give it a chance.

Turning Up The Heat On Fossil Fuels

In 2010, President Obama pledged to install solar panels on his official residence as a sign of his commitment to renewable energy, and environmentalists were thrilled. According to the Washington Post, “at the time of the 2010 announcement, then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu and White House Council on Environmental Quality chair Nancy Sutley said the administration would conduct a competitive bidding process to buy between 20 and 50 solar panels.” The upgrade, “which will help demonstrate that historic buildings can incorporate solar energy and energy efficiency upgrades, is estimated to pay for itself in energy savings over the next eight years,” Sutley continued.

Now, several years later, the promise is bearing fruit. The Obama’s may not be touting it as an official signal that fossil fuels are on their way out, but there’s no denying it’s one of solar power’s biggest endorsements to date.

“No one should ever have taken down the panels Jimmy Carter put on the roof,” 350.org founder Bill McKibben said in an emailed press statement. “But it’s very good to know that once again the country’s most powerful address will be drawing some of that power from the sun.”

Pushing Americans to become more energy efficient has been a major focus of Obama’s Department of Energy, and there’s comfort to be found in an Administration that practices it what it preaches. But putting solar panels on the White House is the easy part. Changing deep-rooted policies that have favored fossil fuels for decades, that’s where the real work–and reward–is waiting.

Image: Francisco Diez

The post The White House Gets Solar Panels (Again): Will America Follow Suit? appeared first on EcoSalon.

The White House is going solar (again). Two weeks ago, Nancy Sutley, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced at a “GreenGov” symposium plans to install solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the executive residence next spring. This, they say, is “a project that demonstrates American solar technologies are available, reliable, and ready for installation in homes throughout the country.” Nice. But while the Obama administration’s promotion and support of alternative energy is encouraging, if not exactly aggressive, I’m reading these greening of the White House stories and am not sure whether to be encouraged or depressed. To be sure, this solar panel installation is a good thing. Likewise, it was a good thing four presidencies and three decades ago – when we did it the first time.

Maybe it’s because we’re staring down the barrel, so to speak, of a 1994 redo; a tragic, almost identical backslide to the one that took place on the Hill in the midterms of 15-plus years ago. With this history repeating itself right now, the idea of traction on issues like solar power seems so fleeting. To wit, I bring you Jimmy Carter, who installed similar panels on the mansion to much fanfare in 1979.

It was a move supporting his energy policy, which he discussed in a famous televised speech a few years prior: “Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.” he told us. “It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.”

Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy put an end to that nonsense – immediately and completely. “The budget for the [Solar Energy Research] Institute – which President Jimmy Carter had created to spearhead solar innovation – was slashed [under Reagan] from $124 million in 1980 to $59 million in 1982. Scientists who had left tenured university jobs to work [on the project] were given two weeks’ notice and no severance pay,” Arthur Allen wrote in Mother Jones back in 2000, just months before another Big Oil president would take office. “By the end of 1985, when Congress and the administration allowed tax credits for solar homes to lapse, the dream of a solar era had faded”¦ Solar water heating went from a billion-dollar industry to peanuts overnight; thousands of sun-minded businesses went bankrupt.”

In 1986, when work was done to fix a leaky roof, President Reagan took down the panels. “By ripping the solar thermal (aka solar hot water) panels off the White House roof in the mid 80s to make a “˜statement’ against alternative energy – and for oil – Reagan was instrumental in killing the U.S. solar thermal industry,” says Lisa Margonelli, Director of the Energy Productivity Initiative at the New America Foundation. Sadly, she also informs us that the Virginia company that made the White House panels was out of business by 1991.

So here we are again, more than a quarter of century later, and Obama’s repeat of Carter’s gesture leaves us to wonder where we would be today “if only.” Think about 30 years of intensive, subsidized investment in solar power – or wind, for that matter. How different would our world be today? I’m not just talking about global warming and environmental issues here. I’m talking about jobs. I’m talking about geopolitics. I’m talking about war and peace.

Ironically, as recent as last month, in an effort to avoid comparison to the ill-fated, one-term Carter administration, the Obama White House looked like it was about to balk at installing the panels. So the turnaround (albeit symbolic) this close to election time does indeed show some alternative energy chops.

I hope they’ll still be there in 2015.

Image: Beverly & Pack

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