Best: Jimmy Carter’s overlooked Colorado nexus
The late president had nuclear training but an interest in renewable energy with impact in Colorado lingering to this day
Jimmy Carter had an underappreciated role in Colorado’s story. It started in May 1978 when he announced that the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden would get $100 million in federal funding.
“Nobody can embargo sunlight,” Carter said. “No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters. It’s free from stench and smog. The sun’s power needs only to be collected, stored and used.”
It was a rare umbrella day in Golden. Carter’s timing for his proclaimed “Sun Day” was off. But he was on the mark about solar energy in ways that we have yet to fully appreciate.
Carter had advanced schooling in nuclear energy, but by 1975 he was thinking about renewables. He invited Ron Larson, an electrical engineering professor from Georgia Tech, to share lunch and talk about renewable energy.
“At that time there wasn’t much to photovoltaics,” says Larson. “It was over $100 a watt. Now it’s less than $1 a watt.”
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Larson moved to Colorado in 1977 to work as Solar Energy Research Institute’s first principal scientist and stayed in multiple roles in helping pivot our energy use. Since then, thousands have followed.
One component of Solar Energy Research Institute’s mission to advance the use of solar energy was outreach to 300 builders and architects in Colorado to help them learn how to construct houses with a lessened need for fossil fuels.
John Avenson, an engineer with AT&T/Bell Labs, was among the beneficiaries. The house in Westminster that he built in 1981 faces south and has large windows coupled with effective shades.
On Facebook the day after Carter’s death, Avenson rued the widespread failure to acknowledge Carter’s early thinking.
“Every house built since then should have been this good or better but the program was cancelled by (President Ronald) Reagan,” he wrote.
Avenson’s house near Standley Lake Reservoir was built with a natural gas furnace. He rarely used it, his gas bills never surpassing $180 for a full year. After tweaking and new technology, he was finally satisfied the house would do fine at 20 below without the furnace. In 2016 he had Xcel Energy stub the gas line.
When I visited him on New Year’s Eve, he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. “I’m an Arizona kind of person,” he said. He keeps the house at 72 to 78 degrees. It will be featured on a Jan. 25 broadcast on PBS.
I asked Avenson about Carter’s death. “Oh, so sad,” he replied. “He influenced my life and didn’t know it.”
Steve Andrews was also influenced by Carter. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he had used the GI Bill of Rights to take college classes in basic engineering. That led to an internship and then a job at the Solar Energy Research Institute. He wrote the guidebook for the 1981 Denver Homebuilders annual Parade of Homes featuring a dozen passive-solar homes across the Denver metro area.
Then, Andrews got laid off. As president, Reagan had no real use for renewable energy. He famously removed the 32 solar panels that Carter had placed atop the White House. He also halved the Solar Energy Research Institute’s budget. Andrews, a recent hire, was among the first to go. The mission of the Solar Energy Research Institute was also narrowed, pushing outreach to the back burner. The director, Denis Hayes, was fired after accusing his bosses at the U.S. Department of Energy of being “dull gray men in dull gray suits thinking dull gray thoughts.”
Later, under a former oilman, President George H.W. Bush, the Solar Energy Research Institute was resurrected as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which has now expanded to a staff of 3,675 employees and broadened its influence.
Can it be a mere coincidence that Colorado, in 2004, had the nation’s first voter-initiated renewable energy portfolio standard? Or that Colorado in recent years has adopted a dozen or more first-in-nation policies and regulations designed to curb greenhouse emissions? We might be guilty of parochial pride, but there can be no doubt that Colorado belongs in any national conversation about the pivot to a new energy economy, to use the title of former Gov. Bill Ritter’s center that is affiliated with Colorado State University.
Ironically, passive-house building has gotten little traction. The economics are unassailable, and the technology just isn’t that difficult. It does take basic site planning. Andrews, in his post-Solar Energy Research Institute career, once calculated that 85% of houses in metro Denver face east or west. That results in unwanted summer heat, but little in winter, when it is wanted. Housing should face north and south.
Colorado has decades of work ahead in decarbonizing its buildings. We need to remember what Jimmy Carter understood nearly 50 years ago.
Allen Best publishes Big Pivots, which focuses on climate change and the energy and water transitions in Colorado. See more at BigPivots.com.
