I lived in the Knoxville/Oak Ridge TN area at the time. Under Carter the TVA had built full working house demonstrations of solar, geothermal, and passive cooling homes. They were all cancelled shortly after the 80 election.
My dad worked for TVA (in Knoxville) on their nuclear plants. I got a tour of Oak Ridge including a test reactor where you could look into a reactor core … through about 20 feet of flowing water, an early unforgettable blue.
Hey, so did I! ORHS class of '82. Maybe we met back in the day?