Ruining the promise of solar energy

Yet solar energy does have great possibilities; in particular, solar energy could make a major contribution to space heating in homes, offices and industrial enterprises.

But solar energy is being killed by its alleged friends: by Nader, Lovins, Brower, and every other anti energy demagogue in the country.

For one thing, they turn to government to coerce people into solar power. What type of energy is best is not to be decided by the consumer and the free market, but by the wise men who know what is good for you. They know how best to deliver the mail, how best to run the railroads, how best to balance the federal budget; and now they will show you all about solar energy.

What the professional bureaucrats leave standing, the politicians will demolish. Although solar energy costs more than would follow from Lovins's coolly concocted figures, it is getting cheaper, and would continue to do so if the politicians did not step in to give a tax break here and cripple something there, subsidize here, confiscate there, forbid a little here and make the rest compulsory. The solar engineer who understands physics is already being driven out by the operator who understands Washington.

Finally, and perhaps most damagingly, solar power may well be crippled for decades when people find out that what Jerry Brown and Amory Lovins told them was shameless political demagoguery. Even such great statesmen as Lola Redford and Jane Fonda are powerless against simple physics; and when all the power plants, mines and refineries have been done in, they will not be able to deliver the needed energy with their forward looking and consciousness raising windmills.

There was once a time when ecology was not a faddish cult, but a respectable scientific discipline; and when environmentalists were interested in the environment, not in social revolution. There were solar advocates and solar experts, too. They were interested in the sun as a source of energy, not as a source of easy income ripped off the taxpayer.

Foremost among them have been the Meinels, husband and wife, doctors of astronomy at the University of Arizona. They have been studying solar energy since the 1940's; they had collectors going at a time when Lovins could not tell the sun from the moon or from his diapers. Overselling solar now, the Meinels warn, could create a backlash from a disillusioned public in several years. It is not yet time, they say, to take solar and let it damage other options such as nuclear and coal.

Everything will be solar in 30 years, gushes Nader. In 50, anyway, adds Lovins. 50% solar by the end of the century, opines Denis Hayes, recently knighted at the court of James Schlesinger (DoE's first award for "exceptional public service"!). All of these brilliant scholars are rudely contradicted by Dr Michael Noland, deputy director of DoE's Solar Energy Research Institute: "We can and should be very proud as a nation if solar power provides 7 to 10% of our energy by the beginning of the 21st century."

And then there are the entrepreneurs and technicians who built solar houses for their merits long before they were built to land a contract out of the DoE's bulging solar budget. One of them is Steve Baer, founder of Zomeworks, Inc., in New Mexico, inventor of the solar Drumwall and the Skylid. Is he being showered with favors from Washington's sunworshippers now? Here is what he says in Solar Age:

"We can't compete with the National Center of Appropriate Technology in any way. They've got your money and my money. . . They can afford to pay double the salary that small business can. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's a good way to run the country."

There are, in short, two ways to obtain solar energy. One is from the government. The other is from the sun.

Under the able guidance of Jimmy Carter and Lola Redford, the sun is losing out.