Which way will Barack Obama turn on solar power?
By Suzanne Goldenberg, guardian.co.uk
It looks like Barack Obama may be reneging on his promise to put solar panels on the roof of the White House by the end of this spring.
On the other hand, the administration is pushing ahead with its plan to expand the deployment of large-scale solar power plants.
The interior secretary, Ken Salazar, and a clutch of other high-ranking officials flew to California on Friday for the official groundbreaking of a project that ranks among one of the largest solar facilities in the world.
So where does this put Obama in the big solar vs small solar debate?
Once completed, the 1GW Solar Trust of America project being launched on Friday just west of the town of Blythe California (see video here) will generate enough electricity to power 300,000 to 750,000 homes, a statement from the interior department said.
The Obama administration has awarded more than $8bn in loan guarantees to half a dozen such mega solar power projects, including the funds for the Blythe plant, according to department of energy statistics.
Solar Trust of America received $2.1bn for the first phase of the project.
But the public has had mixed feelings about huge solar farms. A number of projects are now stalled because of legal challenges.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to get greens on side for situating massive industrial facilities in fragile desert landscapes where water is scarce.
However, the Blythe project claims to avoid that problem with a new air cooling technology.
Others would much rather see the Obama administration give more of a push to small-scale, decentralised deployment of rooftop solar panels – on homes, on big box stores – directly in the urban areas where the power will be used.
There seems to be growing public acceptance of that kind of deployment. A report released on Thursday (pdf) from the main solar industry lobby group found that Americans installed 252 MW worth of photovoltaic solar in the first quarter of 2011.
That’s a 66 per cent rise over last year – although predictably nearly half of those panels were installed in California.
So which side is Obama on when it comes to home-based solar?
The campaign group 350.org this week renewed its campaign to get Obama to install solar panels on the roof of the White House.
The energy secretary, Steve Chu, announced last year that Obama would have the panels up by the end of this spring. With the official start of summer on 21 June, Obama has only a few days left to show Americans which way he is going to go.
