Obama Administration Refuses Carter White House Solar Panel

14 by Timothy Hurst on September 10, 2010

After a week-long road trip from Maine to Washington, D.C. to return one of the original Carter White House solar panels and offer it to President Obama, author and activist Bill McKibben, along with three students from Unity College, walked away from a meeting with Administration officials still holding that panel they hauled half-way down the Eastern Seaboard.

Administration officials essentially said 'Thanks, but no thanks' to the the Carter-era solar panel and an offer for a new solar PV system for the White House, after 48 hours of back and forth about whether they would even meet with McKibben and the Unity College students,

"I just walked out of a disappointing meeting with the White House," wrote McKibben in an email on Friday afternoon, "they refused to accept the Carter solar panel we came to Washington to deliver." McKibben added that the White House said "they would continue their 'deliberative process' to discuss putting solar panels back on the White House roof."

"Well, we're done deliberating," said McKibben who is now working with his 350.org to organize an international day of climate action on 10/10/10 called the Global Work Party. "When Pakistan is under water, Russia is on fire, and millions of people are ready for clean energy jobs, it's not time to deliberate: it's time to get to work," he said.

The New York Times reports that The White House issued a statement after the meeting that focused less on the gift and proposed solar upgrade and more on President Obama's bigger picture renewable energy achievements:

“Representatives from the White House met with the group to discuss President Obama’s unprecedented commitment to renewable energy including more than $80 billion in the generation of renewable energy sources, expanding manufacturing capacity for clean energy technology, advancing vehicle and fuel technologies, and building a bigger, better, smarter electric grid, all while creating new, sustainable jobs.
They also discussed the Obama administration’s work to: establish more stringent energy efficiency standards, make the federal government more sustainable (and the recent announcement on the 56 agency sustainability plans which include utilizing renewable energy across the federal government), set the first ever joint fuel economy/greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, and eliminate key barriers in the home retrofit industry. They concluded by reiterating our continued commitment to promoting renewable energy development.”

But according to the Solar on the White House blog, the outcome may not have been a huge surprise: "As we expected (but secretly hoped wouldn’t be the case), the White House didn’t commit to … well, anything. We tossed them a big, fat soft ball to hit out of the park and they just watched it float on by."

The solar panels, first installed by the Carter Administration in 1979, were removed when the White House roof was being repaired in 1986 during the Reagan Administration. At the same time, funding for research into renewable energy all but dried up.

In 1992, Unity College in Maine acquired the panels under the government surplus donations program. For the next 12 years, the school used the solar panels to provide hot water to its cafeteria and to periodically use for student experiments.

The offer from McKibben and others was not only for a single 31-year-old solar hot water panel--that panel is more symbolic than anything--it would would also come with an entire solar PV array donated by solar company, Sungevity.

If Obama does eventually decide to put solar PV on the White House, the panels would go along with those installed during a 2002 renovation, when George W. Bush installed a solar system on top of the cabana to heat the pool and spa.

"As for the Carter solar panel," says McKibben, "it's going to stay in Washington for now, ready for President Obama to come take it home."

From the film, A Road Not Taken:

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Photos: Jimmy Carter Library; Put Solar on the White House

Category: Environmental Movement, Renewable energy | Tags: bill mckibben, jimmy carter, obama, solar, white house

About the Author:

Timothy Hurst is the editor at Ecopolitology and Earth & Industry as well as the executive editor of the LiveOAK Media Network. He writes mostly about energy and environmental politics, clean tech, infrastructure and green business. When not reading, writing, or talking about environmental politics to anyone who will listen, Tim likes to ski, hike with his aging lab and get dirty in his Colorado veggie garden. Find Tim on Google+.

Follow Timothy Hurst on Twitter: @ecopolitologist

http://glueandglitter.com Becky
Way to set an example! Commitments and standards are great, but what message is the administration sending when they refuse to take actual action??

Tristan
While I would normally have expected the Obama Administration to embrace this wholeheartedly, I do understand a possible reason for not doing so.
In this political climate the Democrats need every advantage they can get, thanks to a large amount of mudslinging, misleading information, and of course good old American stupidity. If Obama accepted this offer he would no doubt be assailed by the GOP for A) taking away jobs from the power company workers who provide power to the White House, B) not offering to pay for the solar panels to keep the economy running, and C) defacing the White House by placing large solar panels all over it.
Now, as an intelligent human who would love to personally sack-punch every Republican as hard as I can for their near-Autistic displays of intellect on a daily basis, I have to say that I would have done it anyways and told them to go f*** themselves. However, as an intelligent human who realizes that merely punching each Republican in the genitals would not bring me closer to my goal of having no Republicans (I mean, ostensibly if I punched hard enough it would put a sizable dent in their population, but I don’t have the endurance for that), I have to say that the Administration made the proper choice for politics, because this gives them more leverage against the Republican media circle-jerk machine. If Fox does call them out on it, what will they say? Obama refused to upgrade to clean power? Fox has been fighting clean energy tooth and nail for years!

Max Farmer
Moreover, he would be attacked for not following the legal, established, and REQUIRED bidding process for carrying out a project like setting up solar on the White House roof.
I wonder why Bill McKibben is unfamiliar with this? Somebody who is so involved with politics, government and alternative energy should know enough to realize that the President would be walking into a lion’s den by accepting his offer. He can’t just accept a “free” solar system without opening up an endless can of worms.
It’s likely that McKibben was told that Sungevity would be welcome to bid along with all the other contractors, in the proper fashion when the req is issued. The story doesn’t indicate if the “free” system offered was a complete energy solution of sufficient capacity to cover the White House’s energy needs or a single array that would only be given if the government also bought significantly larger capacity. There’s no point in putting in a small system for free and then having to expensively integrate that into a larger system by a different manufacturer.

@motsatt
You lost. The green debate is over and the people said no to it. The more of your ideas you get implemented, the closer you are to revolution. When coal fired power-plants get shut down and people freeze to death on those cold dark windless winter nights, people will march on Washington and take power. And there won’t be any environmentalists in the new government. You have lost and there is no way you can win without killing millions of people, and loosing any hope of any influence in Washington. You will never see any power and this solar panels that aren’t being installed on the white house roof are indeed symbolic, but not in the way you would like to see, but a symbol of stopping your efforts. Like nothing will come out of Mexico for the same reasons nothing came out of Copenhagen. You can’t win. You can’t win by default.
Now, please. Let it go. So we can work on important issues, some of them in protecting the environment, but also in taking care of people.
Let it go.

Rico
What idiot bus did you get off of?
socko
wow, @motsatt. who are you? i love how you seperate the environment from the people, suggesting that they are not inter-connected. how supremely short-sighted and arrogant of you. but then that’s the kind of dribble i’ve come to expect from the right. This anti-environment talk is either misguided or driven by greedy motives to protect the current power holders and the status quo.

@motsatt
I’m not rich or on the right. I’m not an idiot or, supremely short-sighted and arrogant. I have no power nor am I greedy, far from it.
I just think your wrong. But good luck winning eighter friends or any debate with your usual ad hominen talk. Thats why you loose because people see through it and like the child that screamed wolf there will be no more times that people come running after Cancun.
May I suggest a global cooling scare for 2040?

Marlo
Learn English you FOOL.
MooMoo
Loose – Lose…… know the difference…..
Max Farmer
Except, you ARE an idiot. The energy industry doesn’t give a flying poot about your opinion. They care about cost per kilowatt/hour. They care about long-term monitization of capital investment, and green gives better long-term payback.
The fact that you’d bring climate change into this indicates you don’t know what you’re talking about. This has nothing to do with climate change. This has to do with cost and intelligent use of existing resources.
Motsatt: Even if I worked in the fossil fuel industry, even if I was potentially shooting myself in the foot by advocating clean energy, I would do so. The fact that you are willing to gleefully argue in favor of dirty fuel sources, and the fact that you seem to take joy in what you purport (wrongly) to be the failure of new technology labels you as a troll and a luddite, to out of touch with current reality to continue to exist for long. I pity you and those like you.

Max Farmer
Meanwhile, under your nose, thousands of wind turbines are coming online, and gigawatts of solar generating capacity are being added to the grid.
What do you mean with your whole line of “when people freeze to death” nonsense? In what world would we shutdown existing power sources before being able to backfill capacity? Mottsat, the people who manage grid capacity and balancing aren’t stupid. They don’t maliciously create shortfalls just to make political points.
Nothing needs to come out of Mexico, or Copenhagen. The market is shifting to renewable energy sources because they’re becoming cost effective. Virtually the only new capacity coming online is all green.
Feel free to cast your silly rantings to the wind, for all the good it does you. The rest of us will get on with improving the quality of life on Earth.
The revolution you speak of is in progress. It consists of powering our machines with wind and sun, saving petro-chemicals for more rational uses. That’s the revolution.

Bullet
About $92 billion – more than 11 percent – of Mr. Obama’s original $814 billion of stimulus funds were targeted for renewable energy projects when the measure was pushed through Congress in early 2009. Only about $20 billion of the allotted funds have been spent – the slowest disbursement rate for any category of stimulus spending.
The Department of Energy acknowledged that as much as 80 percent of some green programs, including $2.3 billion of manufacturing tax credits, went to foreign firms that employed workers primarily in countries including China, South Korea and Spain, rather than in the United States.
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ndnwindrider
to do anything to the White House involves lengthy negotiations and a mandatory bidding process for minority and disadvantaged vendors. and…because it is the White House there is an incredibly huge amount of red tape to do any renovations with Historical Landmarks. from the article itself the answer was not NO…”McKibben added that the White House said “they would continue their ‘deliberative process’ to discuss putting solar panels back on the White House roof.” I seriously doubt with every thing that’s going on President Obama can stop and think about solar panels on the White House. can you imagine what would be said about him if he did…try…