Jimmy Carter, at 94 years of age continues to invest in helping people. He was way ahead of his time in 1979n when he put solar panels on the White House.
He made this prediction back then, “In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”
“President Carter saw [solar] as a really valid energy resource, and he understood it. I mean, it is a domestic resource and it is huge,” Fred Morse, director of Carter’s solar energy program, told Scientific American.
“It was the symbolism of the president wanting to bring solar energy immediately into his administration,” he continued.
But Ronald Reagan, bless his heart, took the solar panels down when he took office just a few years later.
Carter was right about two things he said in that dedication. Those solar panels are a museum piece, and renewable energy has become one of the most important American efforts of the new millennium.
Carter has spent much of his time after leaving the White House working on building homes with Habitat for Humanity.
And in 2017, he leased ten acres of land near his home in Plains, Georgia, to be used as a solar farm with 3,852 panels.
Three years after going live, Carter’s solar farm now provides 50% of the small town’s electricity needs, generating 1.3 MW of power per year. That is equal to burning about 3,600 tons of coal.
“Distributed, clean energy generation is critical to meeting growing energy needs around the world while fighting the effects of climate change,” Carter said in a SolAmerica press release. “I am encouraged by the tremendous progress that solar and other clean energy solutions have made in recent years and expect those trends to continue.”
