US House passes clean energy bill

Jimmy Carter had a great plan for solar power and by 2000 it would've generated 20% of our nation's energy. Too bad the first thing Reagan did upon entering office was to rip the panels off the white house and scrap the program in it's entirety.

Originally posted by merryxmas
Jimmy Carter had a great plan for solar power and by 2000 it would've generated 20% of our nation's energy.

Can you elaborate?

First and Foremost I am all for clean/renewable/cheap energy.

With that said:

I'm under the impression that it still takes more energy to produce the actual solar panel than it would produce in it's life time (was brought up in a discussion I had with my Boss). If this is the case then Solar Energy is still not the renewable energy that we think it is.

I don't have any actual hard facts but I'm sure somoeone knows more.

Anyone care to add to this (or debunk it)?

Originally posted by Johnmike

Originally posted by merryxmas
Jimmy Carter had a great plan for solar power and by 2000 it would've generated 20% of our nation's energy.

Can you elaborate?

Sure. Here's a quick summary from Jimmy Carter's Library.


Basically, in the 70's as I'm sure you know there was a huge energy crisis and Carter knew this was a very real problem. He foresaw the ugliness of being dependent on foreign nations for energy needs and met with many heads of state, politicians, people to try and come up with a way to get off of foreign oil.

His plan for solar power was for the nation to be able to generate 20% of it's consumption by the year 2000. He offered tax credits to anyone who would get solar panels etc. Then Reagan got voted into office in 1980 and tore down the solar panels and revoked the tax credits effectively killing that dream.

Originally posted by ATruGod
First and Foremost I am all for clean/renewable/cheap energy.

With that said:

I'm under the impression that it still takes more energy to produce the actual solar panel than it would produce in it's life time (was brought up in a discussion I had with my Boss). If this is the case then Solar Energy is still not the renewable energy that we think it is.

I don't have any actual hard facts but I'm sure somoeone knows more.

Anyone care to add to this (or debunk it)?

Even if this is true.
That dosnt realy matter, because it takes the energy of a plant made to make
them, and creates 100% free energy ( - minus installation and such ) for the end user.

So thats not really a big problem.