Jimmy Carter Solar Panel Heads Back to White House

In a time when little to nothing is getting done about climate change at the legislative level, much of the efforts of the frustrated environmental movement must be symbolic in nature. Such is the mood and motive of Bill Mckibben, and others en route to Washington D.C. with one of the now-legendary Jimmy Carter solar panels that once graced the White House roof.

The Carter Panel Movement, we’ll call it, is an effort to re-raise awareness about climate change and our immediate environment, as well as the solutions already within our reach for solving (or at least curbing) these eco-systemic problems.

The White House solar story goes something like this.

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter and Congress enacted incentives for renewable energy very similar to what we’ve seen over the past decade. Carter also installed a solar hot water system on the White House roof. However, when Ronald Reagan entered office, the focus changed quickly from renewable energy back to oil, coal and fossil fuels. Reagan even went so far as to remove Carter’s solar panels from the White House roof (not to mention help kill federal solar incentives, setting the industry back about two decades).

In a somewhat odd twist, solar was once again revived at the White House by George W. Bush, who very quietly installed solar thermal systems on the presidential spa and on a maintenance shed. Now Sungevity, a San Francisco Bay Area solar installer, is offering the Obama family free installation of a photovoltaic (PV) solar energy system on the actual White House, a more than $100,000 donation that would see 17.85 kilowatts (kW) of solar electricity pumped into the very large, very power-hungry building. The panels would provide up to 81 percent of the First Family’s power needs.

It’s an obvious offer one couldn’t refuse, right? Well, Obama hasn’t refused it, but he hasn’t accepted it either. This, in part, is why Bill Mckibben and cohorts are on their way to D.C. from Maine with a Carter-era solar collector, which, by the way, has been producing solar hot water for the three decades since Carter installed it (for Unity College in Maine rather than the White House).

It, much like the Sungevity offer, is a symbolic effort to put solar power and renewable energy back on the forefront of the President’s mind, and at the top of his home. The power of White House symbolism to do that, notes Mckibben, is evidenced by the White House Garden. After Michelle Obama very publicly planted it shortly after occupying the house, seed sales increased nationwide by 30 percent over the following year. What would happen if President Obama very publicly and very proudly unveiled a hundred-solar-panel array on the White House roof — in plain view for all to see? The PR ripples would be felt the world round and could boost the excitement level needed to maintain an active, successful climate movement over.  For the next two years, we’ll likely be in limbo on climate change in Congress following this summer’s epic failure — even amid the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. A movement like this is much, much needed.

Sungevity, Bill Mckibben and others want Obama to agree to install the panels by October 10, 2010 (10/10/10), a day that is being transformed into a Global Work Party focused on clean energy and sustainability. Why Obama has not accepted the Sungevity offer is unclear, given his ostensibly strong support of renewable energy (although his lack of leadership in this summer’s congressional climate change fight has been widely criticized).

Perhaps Mckibben, with Jimmy Carter’s solar panel in tow, can lead the way.

Posted on September 8th in Solar Politics by Dan.