One thing that happened under Carter was the deregulation of natural gas (the 1978 Natural Gas Policy Act). Before that, wellhead prices were federally regulated.

It's difficult to understand now, but natural gas was viewed as something in short supply back then that had to be price controlled. Of course the causation was in the other direction: price controls led to shortage, and once those were removed enormous new sources of gas began to be uncovered, eventually leading to the fracking revolution. Today in the US natural gas is a colossus, having beaten down coal and nuclear.

It's an interesting question to ponder what could have been done had they knew how big a problem it would be. Imagine going back in time, but lacking any technical knowledge to bring. You also can't do 'I am from the future and this is what you must work on'. All with past tech and past political economy.

* I wonder how much investing in solar would have been worth it. The tech was carried over by a huge investment in semiconductors that helped silicone tech on the side. If you go back early you probably end up replicating it and that costs a lot? Or I could be wrong here.

* Wind tech was probably doable. You could have iterated over designs, material science was behind but not that much I think. Nuclear was reasonable too.

* CFLs were developed in the late 70s. One could have done an early version of banning incandescent lighting. Blue LED lightening weren't invented yet and took a breakthrough.

* Probably even more stringent fuel mandates. Electrical vehicles were in the future, you could have brought them forward by a decade or two, but in the 1980s they weren't an alternative, and I don't think in the 90s either?

* Of course, the US could have mandated solar water heaters where the climate allows.

We can imagine an alternate past where green tech was wind + nuclear, and lightening was CFLs.