t Harry S. Truman forecast a market for 13 million solar heated houses by 1975. The projection was not met because the price of oil and natural heating was so low, it made solar economically uncompetitive. However, the high energy prices of the 1970s gave solar a resurgence that was evident in a period of research and development advances in solar technology. However, even favorable payback periods for solar technology did not generate the demand expected by solar energy proponents (Wasserman).
Solar energy will eventually be needed because the rate of use of oil, the main fuel of the industrial world, is greater than the rate at which oil reserves are being replaced. United States petroleum reserves peaked back in the 1970s at 47 billion barrels, and declined by 10 billion barrels in the early 1980s despite the discovery of 10 billion barrels in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska (Hayes).
Much of the 15 million barrels per day of oil consumed by the United States comes from the politically unstable Middle East. The major remaining source of new oil in United States territory is Alaska, which has between 16 billion and 60 billion recoverable barrels of oil. However, this Alaskan oil, mostly locked below ice in the Arctic, is very difficult and expensive to find and produce. Offshore wells in th
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