Energy

As many Oil & Energy Investor readers may know, my home base is in sunny Florida (a fact I'm quite grateful for during these winter months), while my team operates out of Baltimore, Maryland.

I recently told one of my team members that he should be very proud of his home country, Sweden.

Among Sweden's many other renewable energy accomplishments – not the least of which is meeting its 2030 renewable energy goals 12 years early – it just made wind energy history.

Now, the world's energy novel is a constantly evolving, many layered story, and renewables are playing a bigger and bigger role.

You might say they're edging their way into "main plot point" status.

The International Energy Agency reported that in 2017, renewable energy saw the highest growth rate of any other energy source.

My life has taken me in many different directions.

From working as an intelligence officer for the American government to consulting for dozens of governments around the globe in the world of energy, I can't claim that my life has been dull.

However, although my life has taken a trajectory that I may not have expected in my youth, I do truly enjoy what I do.

And when it comes to energy, there are many things that excite me.

One thing I can tell you is the most exciting thing about seeing and knowing the latest in energy is that it is a constant, ever-evolving industry.

And by that I mean it is always working to improve itself.

These days, with the oil market in shambles (though, as I wrote about last week, it is beginning its recovery), I've been keeping an eye on the renewable industry.

U.S. presidents through the years have all had very different ideas about the energy industry.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter spearheaded what would become a renewable revolution, and placed 32 solar panels on the White House roof amid a national energy crisis caused by the Arab oil embargo.

He was the first president to do so, and the first to take renewable energy seriously as a form of reliable and efficient energy consumption.

In the words of President Carter, "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy... A generation from now, this solar heater... can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people."

However, in 1981, President Reagan, who had very different ideas of how energy should be collected, ordered those solar panels removed. In fact, that was one of the first things he did upon taking office. Apparently, he considered them "a joke."

Half of the original 32 panels were moved to Unity College in Maine in 1992 to be used to heat water.

And in 2010, President Obama, who was a well-known advocate of renewable energy, ordered solar panels reinstalled at the White House.

Now, as longtime Oil & Energy Investor readers will know, I'm fully on board with expanding the United State's hold on renewable energy.