Bring Back the White House Solar Panels!

Link to Earthfirst

Whatever happened to the White House solar panels, and Jimmy Carter’s solar thermal water heater? Some people want to point the finger at former President Bush, but the fact is, Reagan had them removed in 1986 and until recently nobody really knew where they ended up. The Huffington Post found filmmakers working on a documentary that tracked the panels to their current location.

In 1979, Jimmy Carter, in a forward-looking move, installed solar panels in the roof of the White House. This symbolic installation was taken down in 1986 during the Reagan presidency. In 1991, Unity College, an environmentally centered college in Maine acquired the panels and later installed them on their cafeteria.

In “A Road not Taken”, swiss artists Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller travel back in time and, following the route the panels took, interview those involved in the solar panel decisions, in the oil crisis of the time, and in the way that that moment presaged our own era. The documentary essay is still in work and will be about 70 minutes long.

It turns out that at some point Unity College donated one of the panels to Carter’s presidential library and auctioned off the rest [UPDATE: they were never auctioned off - see comments!]. The solar-powered water system still heats up the college’s cafeteria water.

In 2003, the National Parks Service quietly had new solar panels installed on the roof of a maintenance building on White House grounds. The Bush Administration also had two smaller solar thermal systems installed that same year. It has been reported that the 9 kW system on the maintenance building roof doesn’t produce much power because it’s too shaded by trees.

It seems like there’s plenty of sun in other areas on White House grounds, though – why not add more panels? There have been a lot of calls for Obama to reinstall solar panels on the White House itself – there’s even a Facebook group in support of the idea.

Setting an example for the rest of the country is key. Between that and a White House Victory Garden, our new president could show the whole nation the way forward. Bring back the White House solar panels!

Link [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Jimmy Carter Library via Treehugger