The U.S. is Running Out of Energy.

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With that notion in mind, President Carter in 1980 pushed legislation that he said would help "us to reach our goal of deriving 20% of all the energy we use by the end of this century directly from the sun." The forecast proved breathtakingly overreaching. Last year solar energy accounted for about seven one-hundredths of 1% of all U.S. energy consumption. The Bush energy package includes a $2,000 tax credit for individuals who buy and install photovoltaic or solar water-heating equipment in their residences.

Nothing new here: the government has been selling solar for years with generous tax incentives. Most of the public, though, isn't buying. And people who do often have memorable experiences. A quarter-century ago, the owners of a 13-story, 64-unit co-op at 924 West End Avenue on New York City's Upper West Side erected a steel framework on the rooftop, welded it to the building's steel beams and attached 117 solar-collector panels. Water heated by the sun flowed through pipes into a 5,000-gal. storage tank in the building's old coal bin and from there into the building's hot-water system. The project was funded in part with a $112,000 federal grant. Today the solar experiment is long gone. A building workman told TIME that the collectors behaved like sails, swaying back and forth so much that water leaked into apartments below. It cost several million dollars to repair the roof, he said.

But solar is hardly the only alternative energy source that has failed to live up to the promises of its congressional supporters. Just as both parties have embraced President Bush's hydrogen initiative, they have also signed on to another of his long-shot proposals, one he says will provide "clean, safe, renewable and commercially available fusion energy by the middle of this century." Unlike nuclear fission, the splitting of uranium atoms that powers nuclear reactors, fusion joins hydrogen atoms to unleash far more energy. The trick is to control the fusion reaction to generate electricity. It has been an elusive goal for half a century and probably will be for many decades to come. Even so, according to the President, "commercialization of fusion has the potential to dramatically improve America's energy security while significantly reducing air pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases."

That's about what President Carter envisioned more than 20 years ago--albeit with a different timetable--when he signed into law the Magnetic Fusion Engineering Act in 1980. Said Carter: "Fusion power offers the potential for a limitless energy source with manageable environmental effects." The law established as a national goal the successful operation of a magnetic fusion-demonstration plant in the U.S. by 2000.