On the floor of the chamber that has stymied efforts to make Florida power companies drastically increase their use of renewable and clean energy, 120 advocates gathered Monday to make the case again.
The Florida Business Network for a Clean Energy Economy hosted a Clean Energy Congress Monday, with clean energy lobbyist Susan Glickman presiding. The scene was a far cry from 2009, when a bill that would have required power companies to produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources cleared the Senate, but was never brought up on the House floor.
It was brought up on that floor Monday repeatedly, albeit without the Legislature in session.
"We need a (renewable portfolio standard), period," Florida Energy and Climate Commissioner Kathy Baughman McLeod, a delegate to the Clean Energy Congress, said in a presentation to the group. "Other states have one. Your presence here is a cry for leadership from our state."
Other delegates agreed, raising the specter of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that has refocused the attention of state officials on renewable energy.
"We're running out of gas, folks," said Jim Fenton, director of the Florida Solar Energy Center at the University of Central Florida. "A child born today won't drive a gasoline-powered car, because there won't be any left. We can change our energy future today or we can change later. We just have to decide to do it."
Support for renewable energy legislation had waned before the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Organizers of the Clean Energy Congress said at the outset they gathered the group --a mix of renewable energy producers, academics and policy leaders -- in Tallahassee this week to change that. Glickman said the delegates at the congress were "clean-energy patriots gathered to declare our independence on foreign oil."
In her opening remarks, Glickman said, "When we leave here, we're going to have a document that is going to be a vision of what a clean-energy future can look like for Florida, and we're going to take that document on the road."
Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said the congress should sway lawmakers to come back to Tallahassee to take the seats occupied Monday by the delegates for a special session, which appears to have lost momentum since Gov. Charlie Crist and legislative leaders were at loggerheads over the necessity of a drilling ban last month. Republican leaders, especially in the House, said that drilling was already outlawed and since no one is proposing changing that, a special session would be duplicative.
Smith disagreed, saying a session could also revive the renewable energy bill. "We need to leave this session with a very loud cry that we need a special session here in Florida," he said. "We need it in July, where they can pass two referendums. If the Legislature is not going to give us an RPS, get out of the way. Let us take it to the voters, I guarantee we'll win."
But speaking with reporters Monday afternoon as the Clean Energy Congress broke for lunch, Senate President Jeff Atwater said he hasn't spoken with Crist about a special session since May, though he still thinks it may have merit.
"I believe there are some things the Legislature could responsibly take a hard look at in the near term and long term to offer relief to these neighbors of ours who are hurting and are in desperate straits,'' Atwater said.
As for the RPS, Atwater pointed out that the measure has support in his chamber, though it did not receive much of a hearing this year after the House balked in 2009. He said he welcomed the attempt by the Clean Energy Congress to put pressure on lawmakers to take it back up.
"The Senate has been receptive to renewable energy," Atwater said.
Ostensibly a policy summit, the politics of renewable energy, was not far from the Clean Energy Congress.
Embroiled in a heated primary for her House seat, state Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda tied herself to the event, saying she co-created it, and speaking in its opening minutes. Delegates to the congress were welcomed to the Capitol Monday with banners in the lobby featuring Vasilinda.
"The environmental and economic catastrophe in the Gulf must be regarded as the alarm that we unfortunately needed to get us moving off of our addiction to oil," Vasilinda said in a statement before the congress. "For our environment, our economy, our national security, we must lessen our use of -- and thus our dependence on -- this finite and environmentally damaging fuel as quickly as possible."
Vasilinda has been hounded in her first race for re-election by former Leon County Democratic Party Chairman Rick Minor for voting in 2009 in favor of a bill that would have allowed drilling up to three miles off the Gulf coast. Vasilinda has said the vote was an attempt to convince Republican House leaders to move on a stalled renewable energy bill.
Minor did not let up Monday, saying Vasilinda was running from her record by aligning herself with the Clean Energy Congress.
"Today, Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda will join the Clean Energy Congress at Florida's Capitol, yet her record on oil drilling is anything but clean," Minor said in an e-mail to supporters of his campaign. "The facts still remain: She has voted for expanded oil drilling twice and has taken more than $7,200 in Big Oil campaign contributions."
The Clean Energy Congress will continue Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, when delegates will vote on a series of proposals.
