U.S. energy policy makers held remarkably consistent normative and technical ideas (sometimes called values and beliefs) about energy technologies for over three decades. Both types of ideas shaped the problem frame that officials used in thinking about energy policy. Policy elites who thought about the future and about new energy sources conceptualized their problems in terms of economic benefits and national security. Notions of economic benefits changed over time, from the idea that energy should be cheap to promote maximum economic growth to more refined notions that energy markets ought to be efficient to get optimal economic performance. Nonetheless, both notions point to getting energy at the lowest possible price. Discussions of national security emphasized importing oil from sources that would not be interrupted by political acts.

Precisely how policy makers expressed their values and beliefs depended on the contingent circumstances in which they found themselves, but both sets of dominant ideas made for a problem definition that greatly disadvantaged solar advocates. Because of its high market prices, solar was hardpressed to compete with fossil fuels, and because of its diffuse nature, it did not fit into the existing energy production system the way nuclear power promised to do. Although policy makers began to include an assortment of environmental protection values into their frames, that did little to alter the situation.