White House Won’t… er… WILL Go Solar

Beth Buczynski reports over at Care2 that despite last month’s strange snubbing of solar, the Obama White House will go solar after all.

“By the end of this spring, there will be solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the White House,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a clean energy conference at George Washington University on Tuesday (Reuters).

As we reported here, it was a weird story. It was meant to be a grand gesture – Carter had been the first President to install a solar panel, but when Reagan took office he tore them down. He then proceeded to tear down the entire American solar industry. As David Biello notes at Scientific American,

Instead, it has been China that has made that investment, installing millions of solar hot water heaters in the past decade. Simply put, it is the cheaper option in that country, though it is no sunnier there than in the U.S. In fact, one of the White House solar panels now rests in the Solar Science and Technology Museum in the city of Dezhou, courtesy of Huang Ming, proprietor of China’s largest manufacturer of solar hot water heaters. “Everybody in China is busy putting these up on their roofs because they see it all the time,” explained McKibben during the New York pit stop, fresh from a reporting assignment in China.

McKibbon, author and founder of 350.org, was hoping for an American rebirth, but instead got rebuffed.

“I just walked out of a disappointing meeting with the White House: they refused to accept the Carter solar panel we came to Washington to deliver and said that they would continue their “deliberative process” to discuss putting solar panels back on the White House roof.

Well, we’re done deliberating.”

Ecopolitology reports that “the offer from McKibben and others was not only for a single 31-year-old solar hot water panel–that panel is more symbolic than anything–it would would also come with an entire solar PV array donated by solar company, Sungevity.”

While we’re glad the sun will rise over the White House, we’re a little confused. Stay tuned….