Solar energy policy was part of energy policy for all three administrations during the energy crisis. All three hoped that new technologies in general could solve at least some of their problems in dealing with the crisis and could do even more in preventing worse crises in the future. Each administration harbored ideas about solar energy and the way it fit into energy policy, which constituted their problem frames. Those ideas, interacting with their institutional settings and interested actors, led to battles over the solar budget, which exhibited all of the volatility that one might expect from a technology burdened with great uncertainty and an unstable policy environment.

THE ENERGY CRISIS AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL FIX

Every administration sought a technological fix to the energy crisis, at least in the long-term. Policy makers did not like the implications of solving the energy crisis by doing less, so wedded were they to the ideas that using less energy meant stagnation, decline, and so on. Locked in as a core assumption in their problem frame was the need to find ways to deliver large blocks of bulk energy, and to increase that level of energy consumption into the indefinite future. Given that problem frame, consistent since the Truman administration, they all sought technological fixes.

The Nixon administration put a heavy emphasis on increasing energy R&D, including substantial increases for nonnuclear R&D.