Sun Day Celebration Promotes Solar Energy

Date May 3, 1978

The first observance of Sun Day—during which solar energy was promoted internationally in speeches, rallies, celebrations, and demonstrations—marked the beginning of a period of increased interest in the generation of solar power.

Locale United States

Key Figures

• Jimmy Carter (b. 1924), president of the United States, 1977-1981
• Denis Hayes (b. 1944), American environmental activist and advocate of the development of solar power

Summary of Event

As humanity became increasingly energy dependent in the second half of the twentieth century, the search for a safe, renewable power source intensified. The fossil fuels that gave birth to the industrial age became scarcer and more difficult to harvest as the twentieth century tapped the earth of ever greater quantities of natural resources. In the United States, the process of unchecked depletion of energy sources continued well into the 1960’s. Americans in general had long considered the earth’s bounty unlimited, but by the 1970’s a carefree view of fossil-fuel use and management had become untenable.

With diminishing petroleum supplies at home, the industrialized nations had become critically dependent on foreign oil sources, most of them in the Middle East. For the West and for fuel-starved Japan, this relationship would ultimately prove extremely expensive. Oil prices fluctuated wildly through the 1970’s, and petroleum politics became a crucial part of international relations and foreign policy. It was feared that global wars, even nuclear conflicts, might be fought over regional disputes in Libya or Saudi Arabia. The age of industrial expansion had come with an even higher price: pollution. By the late 1950’s, U.S. steel, chemical, and automotive producers had effectively sterilized the Great Lakes. The net results of decades of pollution from auto emissions were also evident by this time, in smog-enshrouded cities such as Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas across the country.

A petroleum substitute had to be found, but no alternative was trouble-free. Coal, the other fossil fuel, had major drawbacks: It was expensive to mine and even more costly to convert into synthetic energy. In 1980, the price of this conversion process was a rather staggering $32 to $40 per barrel. Burning coal also created carbon dioxide, a product that some scientists believed to be a contributing factor in global warming, a process that could have dire environmental consequences. Global warming could make deserts out of farmlands and could melt the polar ice caps. Coastal cities, even whole peninsulas, might ultimately be submerged.

The polluting effects of coal were well understood even before the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century in cities such as London, England, where coal was used in industry and in hearth fires, coal-polluted air was a major cause of lung ailments. The air quality was so poor in some London neighborhoods that it was unbreathable. Even buildings and statuary were adversely affected, with their surfaces eaten away by the highly corrosive coal soot.

One alternative to fossil fuels, nuclear power, was widely promoted in the 1950’s and 1960’s, but it had lost much of its appeal by the early 1970’s. Concerns about the disposal of radioactive waste and the dangers inherent in the technology itself loomed large in the public mind. The potential costs of nuclear mismanagement to human health and the environment were huge beyond imagining, and the popularity and prestige of the atom declined as Americans became better acquainted with its possible hazards. Even as late as 1980, nuclear power plants supplied only 3 percent of the nation’s total energy output. The future of nuclear power, at least in the United States, did not appear promising.

On May 3, 1978, the case for developing solar energy received strong endorsement from U.S. president Jimmy Carter. The president delivered a speech at the newly established Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado, to kick off a global event known as Sun Day. On that day, solar energy was celebrated around the world in rallies, conferences, and peaceful demonstrations. The world seemed eager to accept what the sun promised to provide: a cheap, safe, renewable energy source. Proponents of solar energy noted that, properly harnessed, the sun’s perpetual radiation has the potential to satisfy all the planet’s burgeoning energy needs for as long as humans occupy the earth.

Carter asked all departments of the U.S. government to study solar energy concepts in detail and to hasten the development and implementation of existing solar technologies. To accomplish this, the president ordered that an additional $100 million be added to the 1979 fiscal budget to be used exclusively for solar energy research.

The events of the first Sun Day were the culmination of a long campaign by Denis Hayes, a former senior researcher for Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C. Hayes envisioned a future in which solar-powered homes and automobiles are commonplace, suburban communities are compressed into smaller, more manageable units with efficient mass-transportation systems, and industry and agriculture are equipped with solar power, competently run, and virtually self-sufficient. Hayes not only advocated the implementation of solar-based technologies but also recommended major changes in city planning, mass transportation, and anything else conducive to a more energy-efficient, environmentally friendly world.

Hayes was concerned that the pace of transition from a petroleum-based to a solar-centered energy system might be slowed by special interests. By 1980, some of the world’s biggest oil companies had invested heavily in firms engaged in solar energy research. Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), for example, invested $25 million in a Troy, Michigan, company named Energy Conversion Devices (ECD), hoping to profit from the firm’s research into solar energy conversion. For ARCO, this investment was a long shot. ECD’s founder and president, Stanford Ovshinsky, was an amateur physicist and inventor whose company, since its creation in 1960, had not enjoyed a single commercial success. Nevertheless, many of the major players in the oil business were so interested in the prospects and promises of solar energy that they were willing to invest in firms such as ECD.

In an interview published in U.S. News & World Report on March 3, 1980, Denis Hayes hinted that the giant corporations of the energy establishment might deliberately retard the development of solar technologies in order to protect their own stake in the more traditional power sources. Clearly, the profound changes Hayes envisioned would not be accomplished quickly or painlessly.

Significance

In the aftermath of Sun Day, much of the world became increasingly energy conscious. New technologies sprang up everywhere, particularly in the United States. Some of these inventions were the brainchildren of genuine visionaries with an emotional stake in the future. Other inventions were pure chicanery, their producers more interested in research grants than in helping the world become more environmentally healthy and energy-efficient.

Among the most sensible of these innovations was a prefabricated panel that, when filled with concrete, formed the outer shell of a home, a building, or just about any other structure. The creator, Melvin Sachs, dubbed his invention the U-Form. Sachs believed that buildings made of U-Forms could be constructed in about one-third the time it took to use brick, stone, or wood in construction. U-Forms were also energy savers; Sachs claimed they were nearly 70 percent more energy-efficient than conventional building materials. At the February, 1980, World Fair for Technology Exchange in Atlanta, Georgia, Sachs was honored for “significant achievement in technological development.”

Another promising invention was a window shade that moderated air temperature. The shade was capable of making hot air cool and cool air hot, reducing substantially the need for additional heating and air-conditioning. Equally attractive in terms of energy efficiency was the solar heat collector devised by Bill Rogers. This device consisted of a computer-powered turntable on which 864 mirrors were mounted. The unit was programmed to follow the sun’s path across the sky, and the heat trapped by the device was used to generate steam-driven electricity and air-conditioning. Rogers came up with the idea as a graduate student; by 1980 a full-scale working model was permanently stationed atop the Science Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Not everything labeled solar energy technology need be directly powered by the sun. Solar activists saw energy potential in almost anything natural. Wood, for example, had already made a strong comeback by Sun Day, thanks to soaring oil prices in the early 1970’s. By the 1980’s, wood had surpassed nuclear power as a primary or secondary source of heat in most American homes. Even industries across the United States began to look seriously at wood as an alternative fuel.

Enormous energy potential can also be found in waste material, and after Sun Day, many countries began to explore methods for converting waste to electricity. The Europeans were deeply involved in this technology long before Sun Day. By 1978, three-quarters of all electrical plants employing waste-to-energy conversion were located in Europe. Other plants were located in Japan and the United States.

Livestock and agricultural waste constitutes another potentially huge and replenishable source of energy. Methane is distilled from animal manure, and cheese whey, citrus wastes, and vegetable processing by-products are easily converted into ethanol, a fuel-grade alcohol. Ethanol is also derived from so-called energy crops such as sugar cane and cassava. Other natural technologies aimed at energy production involve the harnessing of wind, water, and the heat at the earth’s core.

After Sun Day, industries around the world began to examine nontraditional methods for conserving and generating energy. They began to tap gases from sanitary dumps and landfills. The windmill, an ancient but still valid technology, was put to use in generating electricity. Researchers began modifying automobiles to run on hydrogen. Early in the 1980’s, the Billings Energy Corporation of Independence, Missouri, marketed a hydrogen-fueled vehicle, a modified Dodge Omni; it sold, complete with water-to-hydrogen converting equipment, for $30,000.

Sun Day did not immediately bring about the solar-powered utopia Denis Hayes had foreseen. In the early twenty-first century the world, and particularly the United States, was still largely dependent on petroleum. U.S. cities and suburbs were still built in huge, sprawling blocks, and, in most places, safe and efficient mass transportation was years if not decades in the future. Although many middle-class American families traveled in smaller, more energy-efficient automobiles, they often owned two or three cars, and many other families bought energy-inefficient sports utility vehicles in the 1990’s. The average American home was still heated by gas or electricity, although some had added solar-based energy-conserving improvements. Industry, far from being energy self-sufficient, had downsized to compete with foreign businesses. Even corporations with environmentally friendly policies were not inclined to employ new, potentially expensive solar technologies.

Bibliography

“Arco’s Big Bet.” Time, January 28, 1980. Discusses Atlantic Richfield’s financial investment in Energy Conversion Devices. Illustrates the aggressive interest of the energy establishment in the fledgling solar technology industry.

Bradford, Travis. Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Discusses the potential worldwide economic impacts of the move toward solar energy and away from dependence on fossil fuels.

Brown, Lester R. “The Coming Solar Age.” Natural History, February, 1982. Explores various solar options in detail, describing the history and the attributes of each technology. Includes discussions of wind power, the energy potentials of wood and waste, hydrothermal and geothermal power, and the energy uses of the sun itself.

Ewing, Rex A. Power with Nature: Solar and Wind Energy Demystified. Masonville, Colo.: Pixyjack Press, 2003. Provides easy-to-understand explanations of both solar and wind power technologies. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and index.

Hayes, Denis. “What’s Ahead for Solar Energy? An Interview with Denis Hayes.” U.S. News & World Report, March 3, 1980. Describes the solar future and contemporary problems in the fledgling solar technology industry.

“No Shortage of Ideas to Solve the Energy Crisis.” U.S. News & World Report, May 12, 1980. Details the flurry of activity that occurred in the 1970’s in the development of solar energy innovations and technologies. Discusses the problems inherent in solar technology and suggests some possible solutions.

Science News 113 (April 22, 1978). Special double-length issue is devoted to the Sun Day celebration and analysis of solar power. Includes articles on, among other topics, the history of solar technologies, the Solar Energy Research Institute, and the sun itself. One of the best single sources for information on Sun Day.