According to the Washington Post, a White House official confirmed on Thursday that the White House began installing solar panels this week.
Three years after it was first announced, the White House is finally getting its new solar panels.
According to the Washington Post, a White House official confirmed on Thursday that the White House began installing solar panels this week.
The administration of President Barak Obama had originally pledged in October 2010 to put solar panels on the White House as a sign of the president’s commitment to renewable energy.
At that time, then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu and White House Council on Environmental Quality chair Nancy Sutley said the administration was looking to buy between 20 and 50 solar panels through a competitive bidding process.
The installation of solar panels on the White House is also in line with the shift that the administration has made towards using renewable energy in federal buildings. The goal is to have 20 percent of the federal government’s energy use come from renewables by 2020.
Californian solar energy company Sungevity lauded the news that the solar installation on the White House has gone through.
“Putting solar panels back on the White House sends a strong message to the American public and the world that the United States has the technology, resources and ability to supply cleaner, more efficient energy alternative,” according to the statement made by Sungevity.
Sungevity has had an active part in the effort to get solar panels back on the White House, starting a Globama petition in 2010 that asked President Obama to commit to go solar. The petition garnered over 50,000 signatures.
Working since the Carter administration
This is not the first time that a solar panel installation was planned for the White House. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter had 32 panels installed on the roof. These were removed however in 1986 during roof repairs.
President George W. Bush also installed a photovoltaic system in 2003 on a maintenance building and two solar thermal units to heat the White House swimming pool.
“Better late than never – in truth, no one should ever have taken down the panels Jimmy Carter put on the roof way back in 1979,” was the response of environmentalist Bill McKibben to the news of the new installation.
Mr. McKibben founded the environmental organization 350.org which, in 2010, found one of the original Carter era-panels still working in Unity College in Maine.
“It’s very good to know that once again the country’s most powerful address will be drawing some of that power from the sun,” added Mr. McKibben.
Unity College in Maine became the home for the Carter-era solar panels which were put to work heating water. Mr. McKibben and a group of Unity students took a roadtrip in 2010 to return the panel to the White House and request that President Obama reinstall it on the roof or commission a new set.
The voyage of the solar panel as well as their history was the subject of a 2010 documentary film entitled “A Road Not Taken.” – EcoSeed Staff
