Cloudy times for Florida’s solar energy future

In a remote field awash with 90,000 solar panels, President Barack Obama praised the launch last year of the country’s largest solar plant in secluded Arcadia as a watershed moment for Florida’s emerging green economy.

Roughly 10 months later, Florida’s time in the sun has darkened, with a smattering of renewable energy programs in place and other projects stalled.

Meanwhile, other states are busy promoting renewable energy policies aimed at reducing dirty fuel consumption and stimulating nascent solar manufacturers.

That Florida, with its bounty of sun-soaked land, might be left behind in the great solar race has become a source of concern among clean energy leaders. A crop of renewable energy projects planned across the nation in the next half decade will birth a lucrative industry, they say, and that is something Florida cannot afford to ignore.

At stake are thousands of new jobs each year and what could be the solution to the state’s simmering debate over the use of foreign and increasingly controversial fossil fuels.

“We have this energy source that is renewable, it is safe, it is environmentally healthy, it can produce millions of jobs,” said Neshama Abraham of the American Solar Energy Society in Boulder, Colo. “It is just that people need to wake up and know it is there.”

It’s not that Florida isn’t a player in solar energy. Overall, Florida ranks fifth in the nation for its total grid-connected solar capacity.

But the gap between Florida and its rivals is vast.

Consider that all of Florida’s solar panel installations combined produce 38.7 megawatts of direct current, or units of power, according to the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. In contrast, front-runner California produces 768 megawatts of direct current. New Jersey, in second place, produces 127.5 megawatts.

“Money is stopping it,” said Nancy Argenziano, chairwoman of the Florida Public Service Commission, whose reappointment to the state utility board was recently rejected by lawmakers she claimed were bought off by powerful utilities, which are among the state’s most generous campaign contributors.

“It has nothing to do with what is better for the country or the state,” she said.

To be sure, solar energy is not cheap. It costs utility companies nearly 70 percent more than coal and gas, and personal equipment still requires a hefty investment from businesses and homeowners. Such market factors have hindered the industry’s growth despite a heightened national focus on environmental policy and fossil fuel independence.

Still, Florida seemed poised to tackle those financial obstacles just four years ago.

Gov. Charlie Crist unveiled a raft of clean energy policies after his 2006 election that would force green power on the state’s powerful electric utility giants and subsidize the purchase of solar energy equipment by businesses and homeowners.

The Legislature’s Republican leaders played along at first. They funded a solar rebate program. They expanded the limit for solar power generation in the state, which Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest electric utility, quickly reached.

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