The White House will run with the aid of solar power, according to the Associated Press.Solar panels are scheduled to be installed in the spring to provide hot water and some electricity to the executive mansion. An announcement will be made this afternoon by Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, according to the report.
The move comes only a four weeks after the White House rebuffed environmental activist Bill McKibben's offer to bring back solar power to the White House. McKibben recently tracked down the solar panels installed in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter and drove them to the White House. He then met with Obama administration officials who refused to take back the solar panels and instead promised to work on a "deliberative process."
Carter had the solar panels installed to provide some of the hot water for the White House kitchen. It was six years after the OPEC oil embargo, a time when solar power was ascending in the U.S.
President Ronald Reagan had the panels removed in 1986. During that period, funding for research and development in renewable energy shrunk and the solar industry slowed. In 2003, President George W. Bush installed three solar systems on the White House grounds, including hot water panels on the pool cabana, though apparently not on the White House itself.
The Obama White House has made clean energy a centerpiece of its policy objectives, but it was unsuccessful passing a combined energy and climate change bill earlier this year.
In an interview last month with Rolling Stone, Obama said the administration will now pursue a piecemeal approach to clean energy. For example, there are legislative proposals to mandate that utilities meet their energy needs with renewable sources or efficiency. Obama's weekly radio address on Saturday highlighted a solar power project and the number of jobs it had created.
A number of environmental groups and solar companies have urged the White House to use solar power, something that the administration is said to have been contemplating for several months. "Putting solar on the roof of the nation's most important real estate is a powerful symbol calling on all Americans to rethink how we generate electricity," Solar Energy Industries Association President Rhone Resch told the AP.
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