Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [51]
But for the twenty-five years after the war, even solar researchers moved on. “Active” solar buildings that used pumps and more complex mechanisms for capturing and circulating solar heat became the scientific center of gravity. Little money for any kind of solar program was available, though.
The elegant and simple solar home, as conceived by George Keck inside the House of Tomorrow, had been forgotten. It wouldn’t be until the late 1960s that a more radical group of architects and rethinkers would rediscover the sun’s heat as a valuable energy input. In the meantime, millions of homes had been built without solar planning or climate considerations. An opportunity was lost to build a less energy-intensive stock of American houses, and we’ll be dealing with the consequences of those decisions for decades to come.
chapter 13
The Solar Energy Research Institute
THE SOLAR ENERGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE (SERI) was born from the chaotic rush into alternative energy research that began in 1973 when the OPEC oil embargo shocked Americans out of their energy trance. The Solar Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 1974 called it into being, but for a variety of all-too-dull political reasons, the Institute’s work did not begin until mid-1977 after Jimmy Carter took office.
Paul Rappaport was appointed the first head of the institute to be, in his own words, “the solar advocate for Mr. Carter.” A respected scientist at RCA for twenty-eight years, Rappaport seemed like the ideal man to lead the nation’s first and only government laboratory dedicated to what we’d now call green tech. “He is credited with many firsts in the development of solar cells,” a June 1977 New York Times profile noted. “In his career at RCA, he has picked up 13 patents for electronics developments, has written extensively on technical subjects and has lectured all over the world. It is an impressive background.”1
It seemed that SERI might be ready to handle its ambitious mission to advance “all of the solar energy technologies and all aspects of the process of moving a technology through the initial research stages to utilization in the commercial marketplace.”2 On May 3, 1978—designated as Sun Day by Congress—Carter visited the Institute, bestowing his blessing on it, promising to put a solar water heater on the White House, and announcing a surprise $100 million extra dollars for solar energy research. At other celebrations across the country, Sun Day was a very successful, if a bit crunchy, event. The Associated Press reported,
Typical of the activities across the country were those in Iowa. There were sunrise services and solar displays. There were songs about the sun and movies about the sun. After the ceremonies—which included a yoga exercise used by Eastern cultures to salute the sun—there was breakfast: granola, whole wheat muffins, and “sunrise soup,” which explained one participant, contains orange juice, tomato juice, lemon juice, consommé and herbs.3
Some Sun Day organizers were not impressed with Carter’s commitment to solar energy. One in particular, Denis Hayes, a senior researcher and author with the Worldwatch Institute, took potshots at Carter’s energy plans from the gates of the White House. “The Carter Administration does not now have a solar policy,” Hayes told the Los Angeles Times.4 He sought a “fundamental change in policy,” he told another paper, because solar had been “consistently discriminated against.”5 As we will see, he was right, no matter how the numbers were sliced.
Meanwhile, things were not nearly as groovy at SERI as the Sun Day festivities might have suggested. The days leading up to Carter’s speech had been filled with lame hand-wringing in the