Harold Hay wants to help the world save itself, but he's running out of time.
Forty years ago, Hay invented a simple, inexpensive way to heat and cool a home using the sun's rays, but without the panels and wiring that come with conventional solar energy systems.
He's been pushing for its adoption ever since, trying to find footing in each of the solar industry's last three boom-and-bust cycles.
Yet, despite the merits of his pioneering technology, the energy establishment has shown only fleeting interest.
Now 98, Hay is making what he knows will be his final push.
The retired chemist promotes his cause by funding research. He vents his frustration in letters, e-mails, phone messages to anyone who will listen, and on his own website, www.2and50needles.com.
Hay is sanctimonious, unyielding and scathingly critical of other people's efforts and the solar business as a whole. He dismisses the Energy Department as being "in the research-forever stage" and the solar trade as "a bunch of money grubbers."
Hay has no interest in softening his message. He doesn't have time for subtlety.
Hay quotes from an article he's earmarked in Natural History magazine:
"When scientists do science, when they play their game, they debate passionately, and disagree openly, often with brutal honesty toward party lines, sacred cows, or" -- Hay raises his voice for emphasis -- "other people's feelings."
He closes the magazine. "Now that defines me as close as you can get." Hay adds, as if reminding himself, "That's why I'm a loner."
That tenacity has sometimes worked against him.
Over time, people lost patience with Hay and then lost interest in his creation, says Ken Haggard, who designs buildings that use solar energy. Hay's combative personality and reluctance to let others join his mission scotched one potential deal and may have turned others off, Haggard says.
"He's a caricature of the mad inventor," says Haggard, who met Hay in 1972 when the architect was a young professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. "He's a genius. But he's also impossible. And he has not mellowed one iota."
It's tempting to write off Hay as a bitter solar has-been, hoping for immortality at the end of his life. But, given today's energy and climate challenges, ignoring his message and achievements could be a mistake.
