ENERGY PANEL URGES CHANGES PAID FOR WITH PRIVATE FUNDS
DATELINE: DANIA BEACH
The Florida Energy Commission has already begun pushing its clean-energy policies to state lawmakers, even though the 2008 legislative session doesn't convene until next month.
The goal is to make sure all the lawmakers are on board with the state's plan to reduce its dependency on natural gas and seek lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The challenge, however, is doing it in a year in which lawmakers again will have to make cuts in the state's budget.
"We can do a lot if we work together, if all of us work together. In fact, that's the only way we can get things done," said Tommy Boroughs, president of the commission, which met Monday at Florida Atlantic University's SeaTech campus in Dania Beach. "We wish them luck in the legislature."
State Sen. Lee Constantine, the one lawmaker who serves on the energy commission, said Floridians can look forward to a bill that will call for more energy-efficient building codes, an increase in biofuels and more stringent requirements to cut carbon emissions.
But don't look for the state to set aside $200 million in incentives for businesses to go green, because the money isn't going to be there.
"I would love to see it, but I wouldn't put a lot of faith in that," said Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs, adding that such incentives would help bring Florida into an economy fueled by alternative energy technologies and startups.
Constantine said he constantly meets with other legislative staffers as well as companies that have an idea for a fuel additive or other alternative-energy technology that could use a boost from the government.
Last week, he said, a public utility company that he declined to name floated the idea of government grants or incentives to make it easier to buy hybrid-powered bucket trucks.
"I said: 'Well, you're not going to get that,'" he said.
"We've got to quit looking at the government to sit there and just hand out these grants," he said. "Many of them are going to do it anyway, so we have to look to the private market or venture capital to help them."
Others are behind that idea.
"We need to stop thinking of this as funding and start thinking of this as financing," said John O'Brien, president and chief executive officer of the Vista Energy Group Inc. in St. Augustine. "I think there's an acute level of pain in the state of Florida to fund some of these things, and there isn't any need to have some of these things be funded by the state."
Mike Hightower, vice president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, also said supporting renewables with government incentives would prove too costly.
"If we're really going to establish a renewable market in Florida, the whole environment is going to change," he said.
Meanwhile, across the state in Sarasota, Gov. Charlie Crist and FPL President Armando Olivera flipped the switch Monday afternoon on the second-largest solar array in the Southeast.
Olivera and Crist gave the official ceremonial nod to FPL's Rothenback Park, which has been producing 250 kilowatts of solar power since Oct. 22. The 1,200-panel project generates enough electricity for 40 to 50 homes.
"We're excited to see this finally get off the ground," Olivera said in a telephone interview after the event.
The clean energy generated at the park will prevent 654,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, the chief culprit in global warming, from being released into the air.
Rothenback Park is the result of FPL's pledge to add 150 kilowatts of solar energy to the grid for every 10,000 customers it signed to its green-power program, Sunshine Energy.