President Jimmy Carter

Last Saturday, The Carter Center released a statement indicating that, after a series of illnesses (including cancer) and hospital stays, 98 year-old former President Jimmy Carter has “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.” The announcement has initiated a lot of reflection and remembrances about Carter’s long list of achievements, from saving a Canadian nuclear reactor from meltdown as a young Navy Lieutenant, to getting Israel and Egypt to sign a historic peace agreement as President, to building houses for Habitat For Humanity well into his nineties as a former President.

However, one achievement by President Carter that may get overlooked was his forward-thinking, early dedication to renewable energy. Perhaps most dramatically, Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof in 1979, well before almost anyone else used such technology. The Carter administration set a goal of delivering 20 percent of U.S. energy from renewable sources by the turn of the century. What happened? In 1986, Ronald Reagan had the White House solar panels taken down and not replaced. And Republicans (along with a few Democrats) have been doing everything they can to stifle renewable energy in favor of fossil fuels ever since. More than 40 years after President Carter set his goals, U.S. renewable energy consumption is only about 12.5 percent of the total (though thankfully it is slowly increasing.)