Instead of looking for the equivalent of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – enough oil in the Gulf of Mexico to solve energy needs for years to come – our legislators in Tallahassee should be embracing an energy act that could help everyone.
Known as the Florida Farm to Energy Act, it is a bill retooled from the 2009 session, when it went nowhere. This bill would allow individuals and businesses to generate their own electricity and sell it back to utility companies.
As Mike Antheil of the Florida Alliance for Renewable Energy told the Sustainable Sarasota Community Partnership last week, "This year we are trying to create jobs and achieve energy independence with our efforts."
Our legislators should be embracing the bill. They should have welcomed it with open arms last year, but far too many of them seem wrapped up tightly in their own self interests, not caring about sound steps for their constituents.
Antheil and his group also have to contend with the major utility companies – another tough group. One of the alliance’s key goals is persuading those companies to buy power back from individuals and firms that put up solar panels on roofs. Although Florida Power & Light has taken a huge step forward in its creation of the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, the largest percentage of energy demand in the United States is met by the old-fashioned standbys, oil and coal.
The utility companies have huge investments in plants that are the antithesis of clean energy, so it’s not likely they are going to embrace the Florida Farm to Energy initiative.
Nonetheless, Antheil pointed out that Germany last year realized 1 gigawatt of energy for its power grid from individuals and companies installing solar panels or wind turbines on their own. Germany has about five times as many photovoltaic panels installed as the United States, according to The New York Times.
France and Spain also are making great strides with feed-in tariffs, the Times reported a year ago.
Antheil did note that getting the feed-in tariff system working would cost electricity users an extra 85 cents a month. However, he also pointed out that Progress Energy already is charging its customers $8.95 a month for a new nuclear power plant.
When we weigh concerns about nuclear energy – especially the continuing dilemma about waste storage – solar power seems vastly preferable, even without that huge difference in extra cost for customers.
Furthermore, oil won’t last forever – in spite of what some pundits proclaim – and even "clean coal" energy is dirty.
We urge our legislators to think about the fact that this is 2010. We’re one decade into the 21st century, and our energy consumption is fueled primarily by non-renewable resources. It seems a very simple but profound step to spur the use of clean, renewable energy through the Florida Farm to Energy Act.