A scale model of the ‘Power Tower’ is explained to President Jimmy Carter, center, at the Solar Energy Research Institute on May 3, 1978, in Golden, Colorado. (Photo by Dave Buresh/The Denver Post) By Allen Best | Writers on the RangePUBLISHED: January 5, 2025 at 5:11 AM MSTJimmy Carter had an underappreciated role in Colorado’s story. It started in May 1978 when he announced that the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden would get $100 million in federal funding.President Jimmy Carter addresses an audience at the Solar Energy Research Institute on May 3, 1978, in Golden, Colorado. (Photo by Dave Buresh/The Denver Post)“Nobody can embargo sunlight,” Carter said. “No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters. It’s free from stench and smog. The sun’s power needs only to be collected, stored and used.”It was a rare umbrella day in Golden. Carter’s timing for his proclaimed “Sun Day” was off. But he was on the mark about solar energy in ways that we have yet to fully appreciate.Carter had advanced schooling in nuclear energy, but by 1975 he was thinking about renewables. He invited Ron Larson, an electrical engineering professor from Georgia Tech, to share lunch and talk about renewable energy.“At that time there wasn’t much to photovoltaics,” Larson told me recently. “It was over $100 a watt. Now it’s less than $1 a watt.”Larson moved to Colorado in 1977 to work as SERI’s first principal scientist and stayed. In multiple roles he helped pivot our energy use. Since then, thousands have followed.Related Articles
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One component of SERI’s mission — to advance use of solar energy — was outreach to 300 builders and architects in Colorado to help them learn how to construct houses with lessened need for fossil fuels.John Avenson, an engineer with AT&T/Bell Labs, was among the beneficiaries. The house in Westminster that he built in 1981 faces south and has large windows coupled with effective shades.On Facebook the day after Carter’s death, Avenson rued the widespread failure to acknowledge Carter’s early thinking: “Every house built since then should have been this good or better but the program was cancelled by (President Ronald) Reagan.”Avenson’s house near Standley Lake Reserv