The Headway team looks back at predictions and promises from the past.
President Gerald Ford had tasked Robert C. Seamans to deal with the energy crisis of the 1970s, and he didn't think wind power had much of a future. At the dedication of an experimental turbine in Ohio in 1975, Seamans stated that wind would never account for more than 1 percent of the U.S. energy supply.
Seamans had a great hope for energy independence, and that was solar power. Gas prices were still high two years after the oil embargo. The Energy Research and Development Administration was formed six months into Ford's term as president.
Seamans was against wind energy, but his agency issued a report that said the sun could provide 25% of the nation's energy use by 2020.
Despite the fact that wind and solar farms have sprouted across the country, solar power made up less than 3% of American electricity last year. President Biden wants to run the U.S. energy grid completely on clean energy within 15 years, and he wants to cut the cost of solar energy by 60 percent over the next decade. Seamans predictions were upside down, so policymakers might do well to explore why.
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The White House had solar panels installed by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. Many of Ronald Reagan's initiatives were reversed.
Jay Hakes, who was an adviser to President Jimmy Carter and the head of the Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy from 1993 to 2000, has spent a lot of time examining why the optimistic forecasts about solar power didn't pan out. He concluded that the answer was complicated, but there was a lot of government support that was inconsistent.
New technology can take decades to pay off, so early research and development is often done by the government. The Department of Energy was established by Mr. Carter in 1977. Mr. Carter said in 1978 that it was too early to focus on commercialization of photovoltaics. He devoted millions to research on new solar technology. The White House had solar panels on the roof a year later in a show of support.
Mr. Carter did not endorse these efforts. Ronald Reagan cut Mr. Carter's renewable energy research budget by 85%. Most of the scientists working on solar energy were fired by the Reagan administration. Reagan decided not to put the solar panels back on the White House roof after they were removed to fix it. Reagan shifted funding from alternative sources of energy into the nuclear weapons program and streamlined regulations for commercial power plants in order to subsidize the nuclear industry.
Germany and Japan forged ahead with solar power as the United States scaled back support. In the 1990s, Germany invested billions in renewable energy research and passed a national law requiring utility companies to buy renewable energy at a fixed rate.
The entire world benefited from its investments in solar cell technology, according to the director of the energy security and climate initiative at the think tank.
In the late 1990s, Japan provided significant government subsidies for residential solar panels and it pioneered the use of semiconductors, material that helps conduct electricity, to manufacture photovoltaic cells, the individual units that make up the solar panels.
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In the 1990s, policymaking at the federal and state level helped make wind power less expensive.
Wind energy was gaining traction in the United States as other countries developed solar technology. Congress passed a production tax credit to subsidize wind installations in 1992.
A senior renewable energy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council said that they have been using wind energy to grind grains forever. It took time for the United States to become competitive because of the technology used to make electricity. The production incentives made wind power more efficient.
The Clinton administration made a small wind push in the late 1990s. Federal agencies were authorized to spend more on energy from renewable sources. 5 percent of the country's electricity will come from wind power by 2020, according to Bill Richardson, Clinton's energy secretary.
Individual states began to put in place policies called renewable portfolio standards, which required some electricity to come from renewable sources. Iowa and Texas became early adopters of the wind belt because they were conservative. In the 2000s, wind installations boomed.
Efforts abroad to make solar technology better and cheaper helped American solar energy to flourish. Chinese solar companies increased production to meet German demand and then to build Chinese installations. The US Congress passed a tax credit in 2005 that made it cheaper for people to install solar panels on their homes. President Barack Obama pumped $90 billion into renewable energy. Over the last decade, increased global production has contributed to the falling of solar energy prices.
Card 1 of 6.
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Ms. Gross is one of the many experts who believe that solar energy will continue to expand and become more affordable, along with offshore wind power. She said that the solar cost is still dropping. The US solar industry grew 43 percent in 2020, and the price for both wind and solar electricity is less than that of coal.
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Legislation made it cheaper for Americans to install solar panels on their homes in the 2000s.
The United States needs a modernized grid for renewable energy to thrive.
It's not possible to send solar or wind energy from California to Delaware or Alabama because of the American electrical grid's three separate networks. Despite the fact that renewable energy costs have plummeted, the U.S. has no federal renewable portfolio standards, which would require that a certain amount of electricity come from renewable energy.
Mr. Hakes notes that both wind and solar have hit significant bumps along the way due to inconsistent policy support. The United States lags behind other developed countries when it comes to making companies pay for carbon emissions. Ms. Gross said that if we price carbon, it would get out of the realm of subsidies.
Tax reductions for producers and buyers of wind, solar and nuclear power were included in the Biden administration's bill. The package hinges on the administration breaking it up now that the bill is dead in the Senate. Mr. Hakes believes that if federal policies of similar scale had been in place earlier, solar prices might have become competitive with gas and coal.
He said that if you give smart people a financial incentive, you will see progress.
The Headway story is the first entry in an ongoing conversation about progress, how we define it and how we make it. We're trying to get some insight into how events have played out in the past. Write to us at DearHeadway@ny Times.com if you want to share your thoughts.
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