Our guest blogger is Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org.

Will President Obama meet his self-imposed deadline to get solar panels back on the roof of the White House by the end of this spring? On Oct. 5, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that the Obama Administration would be returning solar panels to the White House roof. (President Carter installed solar panels on the roof in 1979 only to have them removed by President Reagan a few years later.)

“As we move toward a clean energy economy, the White House will lead by example,” said Chu. “I’m pleased to announce that, by the end of this spring, there will be solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the White House.”

This year, the final day of spring is June 21. That gives the Obama administration just under two weeks to meet their commitment. That’s ample time, according to most solar contractors. We asked Danny Kennedy, the CEO of Sungevity, how quickly he could get a set of solar panels on the White House roof if he got the call. The answer: “72 hours.”

Our team here at 350.org has a vested interest in seeing solar panels back on the roof. Last summer, we launched a campaign, “Put Solar On It,” challenging world leaders to install solar at their presidential residences. Some elected officials seized the opportunity. President Pratibha Devisingh Patil announced a new 50kw array for India’s presidential palace. In October, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives took the challenge a step further, actually getting on his roof to help install the solar panels himself.

The Obama administration proved a bit more difficult to convince. After a number of unproductive phone calls with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, our team at 350.org decided to help push the process along a bit.

As it turned out, one of the original Jimmy Carter solar panels, after being exiled from the White House by Reagan, had ended up on the roof of the cafeteria at Unity College, a small environmental college in Maine. So, on Sept. 7, 350.org founder Bill McKibben and a group of Unity students took one of the panels, put in the back of a bio-diesel van, and began to drive it back to its rightful home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

After great rallies along the way in Boston and New York, our team and the Carter solar panel arrived at the White House. A meeting with administration officials ended in disappointment, however. The officials would neither accept the original Carter panel nor commit to installing a new set of panels on the roof. The promised only to “continue their deliberative process.”

How the installation would play in the press must have been part of the deliberations. Less than a month after our visit, and after taking a bit of a “shellacking” in places like Time, the Washington Post, and the AP for their refusal to commit to our request, the administration announced that deliberations were over and a set of panels would be up by spring 2011.

And now, here we are. With two weeks left in spring, we’re still optimistic that the White House will stay true to their word. As Bill McKibben said recently:

Well, they promised they’d have them up this spring, and I’m sure they will. They’re a can-do bunch, and two weeks is plenty of time to finish a job I’m sure they’ve been hard at work on this since making their promise last fall; only a cynic would suggest they did it simply to get us off their backs. Maybe the president will even strap on a tool belt himself, like the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, who installed panels on his residence in a matter of weeks last year.

In the meantime, we’ll be collecting another round of signatures to send over to White House showing that the American people want President Obama to fulfill his promise. Installing solar panels on the White House isn’t a replacement for a sound climate policy, but it’s concrete step in the right direction.

As Bill said at the time of Secretary Chu’s announcement:

The White House did the right thing, and for the right reasons: they listened to the Americans who asked for solar on their roof, and they listened to the scientists and engineers who told them this is the path to the future. If it has anything like the effect of the White House garden, it could be a trigger for a wave of solar installations across the country and around the world.

At the GreenGov Symposium this morning, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that the the Obama White House will bring back solar power, removed decades ago by the Reagan administration. “The number one question we get when greening the White House, is whether we’re putting solar panels on the roof,” Council on Environmental Quality chair Nancy Sutley said in her introduction. After noting the many practical steps the Obama administration has taken to restore the solar energy industry in this nation, Chu announced that the the “White House will lead by example” by installing solar panels and a solar water heater on the roof:

As we move towards a clean energy economy, the White House will lead by example. I am pleased to announce that by the end of this spring, there will be solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the White House. It’s been a long time since we’ve had them up there. These two solar installations will be part of a Department of Energy demonstration project. The project will show that American solar technology is available, reliable, and ready to install in homes throughout the country. Around the world, the White House is a symbol of freedom and democracy. It should also be a symbol of America’s commitment to a clean energy future.

Watch it:

Although photovoltaic power was first developed in the United States, two decades of domestic neglect have allowed Germany, China, and Spain to leapfrog this country in solar energy. Buoyed by the Recovery Act, however, employment in the U.S. solar industry has been exploding in recent years, more than doubling from 2008 to 60,000 jobs in 2010.

Youth climate activists with 350.org had challenged the White House to lead the nation by example, bringing one of the original solar panels installed by the Jimmy Carter administration to a meeting with White House officials last month. Secretary Chu’s announcement comes days before 350.org’s 10/10/10 Global Work Party. During the largest climate-action mobilization in the planet’s history, hundreds of thousands of people from nearly every nation in the world will follow Barack Obama’s example and participate in actions large and small to make their lives more sustainable this Sunday.

The unveiling of green economy legislation by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Monday has been indefinitely postponed, following a whisper campaign that Senate leadership preferred tackling immigration reform instead. Below is the timeline of the last four days, in which political reporters quote anonymous “Democratic officials” and “Senate Democratic aides” to promote the rumor:

Wednesday, April 21: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) meet. Based entirely on comments from anonymous “Senate Democratic aides,” Roll Call’s John Stanton claims that “Democratic leaders are pushing ahead with plans to move comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year — even if it means punting on energy legislation until next Congress.” The Hill’s Ben Geman cites “a Democratic aide” to claim Pelosi said she is “fine” with “the Senate taking up immigration reform before climate change legislation.” The Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler cites “three Democratic officials” to claim “both leaders said they would put immigration ahead of energy on their priority list.”

Thursday, April 22, Earth Day: The Associated Press’s Laurie Kellerman and Matthew Day cite “two Democratic officials” to repeat the immigration-first rumor.

Pelosi holds a press conference, and is asked about the rumor. Pelosi responds that “energy security and addressing the climate crisis is the flagship issue of my speakership,” notes that the House has “already passed our energy bill,” and “if the Senate is ready with an immigration bill, we don’t want anybody holding it up for any reason, and we would be pleased to welcome it to the House.” Fox News’ Chad Pergram interprets her remarks to claim “Pelosi Okay On Delaying Climate Bill in Lieu of Immigration.”

Graham tells reporters that “If immigration comes up then that’s the ultimate CYA politics,” and “It destroys the ability to do something like energy and climate” to jump to immigration reform legislation, because “We haven’t done anything to prepare the body or the country for immigration” and “business and labor are not together on a temporary worker bill.”

In a story by Politico’s Marin Cogan about Graham’s comments, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) “declined to say which bill she’d prefer be taken up first.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) tells the Christian Science Monitor’s Linda Feldmann, “I don’t know that anybody made a determination in the discussions I have had with leadership that immigration is more important than energy,” and agrees with Graham’s assessment, “I am not sure the Senate can move an immigration bill.”

Friday, April 23: A “Democratic aide” tells Politico’s Kasie Hunt: “Immigration is gaining steam; climate change may suffer.”

“I think these are separate issues on separate legislative tracks,” Lieberman says in a conference call. “One will not adversely affect the other.” Hartford Courant’s Daniela Altimari reports “Lieberman said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid assured him that he will bring the climate and energy bill to the floor, likely in late May or early June, barring any obstacles.”

Saturday, April 24: Graham sends a letter to business, religious and conservation leaders that “I will be unable to move forward on energy independence legislation at this time” because of “what appears to be a decision by the Obama Administration and Senate Democratic leadership to move immigration instead of energy,” unless “their plan substantially changes this weekend.”

Reid, the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin writes, “declined to assure Graham on Saturday that he would put immigration behind energy in the legislative lineup,” responding in a statement instead: “I will not allow him to play one issue off of another, and neither will the American people.” The Hill’s Eric Zimmerman interprets Reid’s statement to claim he “said today that Democrats might push climate legislation before immigration reform.” Reid’s statement blames Republicans, specifically “the tremendous pressure he is under from members of his own party not to work with us on either measure.”

The White House “also declined to indicate whether it would address Graham’s concerns,” issuing a statement by climate advisor Carol Browner saying, “We believe the only way to make progress on these priorities is to continue working as we have thus far in a bipartisan manner to build more support for both comprehensive energy independence and immigration reform legislation.” Talking Points Memo’s Christina Bellantoni notes Browner says about climate reform, “We’re determined to see it happen this year.”

In the evening, Kerry releases a statement that “regrettably external issues have arisen that force us to postpone only temporarily” the Monday unveiling because Graham “feels immigration politics have gotten in the way and for now prevent him from being engaged in the way he intended.” “Joe and I will continue to work together and are hopeful that Lindsey will rejoin us once the politics of immigration are resolved.”

In summary: although Lieberman and Hoyer attempted to debunk the rumor, Senate leadership and the White House refused to address the rumor of timing spread by anonymous Democratic staffers and officials. Graham, who has also been the lead Republican working on immigration with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), announced Saturday he would not participate in a bill rollout with its fate on the Senate calendar placed in competition with unwritten immigration legislation.