What If - Carter's Energy Policy

President Carter in popular culture was not a great President. The high point was the Camp David accords, and the low point the 444 days of the hostage crises. Most polls put him around number 25 out of the 43 Presidents. I admire his work with Habitat for Humanity.

An often overlooked effort was President Carter led efforts for conservation including installing solar on the White House. Unfortunately President Reagan removed it, my guess is more symbolic of the change that was the Reagan revolution. The price of oil fell 75%, and the immediate emergency and sense of urgency was gone. Other conservation measures and funding for alternate energy sources were also removed. I personally appreciate the 55 Speed Limit going, but the gas it saved was good between 1974 and 1984 reduced usage by 2.2%.

It's sad that funding had not continued for his energy policy. Think where we would be today if it had!

His ten principles that guided his energy policy:

The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.

The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems -- wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.

The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.

The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

A sad quote, talking about the reductions by the new administration in the Solar Programs:

"In June or July of 1981, on the bleakest day of my professional life, they descended on the Solar Energy Research Institute, fired about half of our staff and all of our contractors, including two people who went on to win Nobel prizes in other fields, and reduced our $130 million budget by $100 million," recalls Denis Hayes, the founder of Earth Day, who had been hired by Carter to spearhead the solar initiative.

And from the same article talking about what happened when the Carter tax credits for solar water heating went away (and showing why President Carter's 8th Principle of consistency is so important):

"The solar water heating industry instantly went from a billion-dollar industry to an industry that now installs, in the U.S., about 6,000 solar hot water heaters a year," said Noah Kaye, spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association.

United States solar energy production compared to the rest of the world 1997 vs. 2007. The solar industry in the US went into a recession after President Carter left office, until recently.