Inside story: How renewables were stopped in US : Renew Economy

By Allan Hoffman on 2 July 2014

Energy Post

In 1978 a monumental multi-departmental study was submitted to President Carter concluding that “solar energy could make a significant contribution to U.S. energy supply by the end of this century”. The study, backed by 30 federal departments, stated that “even with today’s subsidized energy prices, many solar technologies are already economic.”

Yet no action was taken and solar power and other renewable energies stagnated for over 30 years. Until now. Allan Hoffman, former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy, who personally delivered the report to the White House back in 1978, recalls what went wrong – and what lessons the U.S. should draw if it is to avoid another failed renewables revolution.

On December 6, 1978 I personally delivered a multi-agency report to the staff of the Domestic Policy Advisor to President Carter entitled ‘Domestic Policy Review of Solar Energy: A Response Memorandum to The President of the United States’. It is popularly known as the DPR. The report had been requested by the President in a May 3, 1978 speech in Golden, Colorado, dedicating the newly formed Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI). SERI has since become the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The DPR was the final report of the first comprehensive review by the U.S. federal government of its policies for renewable energy. It involved 30 federal departments and agencies, and at its peak this 6-month study involved the efforts of 175 senior government officials detailed to the DPR task force. As the U.S. Department of Energy’s senior representative to the DPR, and just one month after I had joined DOE as a political appointee, I was designated to head the effort by my new boss, the head of DOE’s Policy Office.

My hopes were dashed when President Clinton tried to put a price on carbon by raising gasoline prices by five cents a gallon and ran into a political firestorm. He never tried again.

The next six months were rather intense, starting with the fact that the other 29 departments and agencies didn’t trust the 30th, DOE, because of some recent history. Shortly before the DPR was announced the Carter Administration had released a National Energy Policy, also a multi-agency effort chaired by DOE. The story I was told by non-DOE staff was that DOE, at the last minute, had pulled out a draft it had prepared on its own and submitted it as the multi-agency report. As a result I inherited a problem of trust and spent much of the DPR’s first month building relationships with the non-DOE detailees to reestablish that trust. The DPR was completed in early December 1978, and delivered to the White House shortly thereafter. The full report, with appendices, was formally published in February 1979 and is available in DOE’s archives.