On June 20, 1979, President Jimmy Carter inaugurated a revolutionary fixture on the White House’s roof: 32 solar panels that would help heat the mighty mansion. Nearly 42 years later, the rooftop panels are long gone—but using solar power is no longer seen as quirky or pioneering. In fact, President Joe Biden has made clean energy a pillar of his new $2 trillion infrastructure plan. There’s just one problem: The West has allowed its solar panel industry to be wiped out by cheaper Chinese rivals—and those rivals primarily make key parts of their panels in Xinjiang, whose manufacturing is tainted by the use of forced labor. The West is stuck between dirty energy and dirty labor. But there’s a solution.
“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 a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people,” Carter said in 1979, introducing the panels made by the pioneering firm InterTechnology/Solar Corp. in Warrenton, Virginia.
