Being the Sunshine State, Florida is prime real estate for solar power, but energy experts say more fertile fields -- and bigger job generators -- can be found in the ground.
"There's huge untapped potential," says Mike Antheil, executive director of the Florida Alliance for Renewable Energy.
But proponents of bio-energy technology aren't totally fired up by Senate and House bills that purportedly promote renewable energy programs.
Senate Bill 992, which was unveiled Tuesday, and its House counterpart, due to be released Wednesday afternoon, both fail to set "renewable portfolio standards" -- leaving Florida as one of just 14 states that doesn't set any goal or standard for renewable energy production.
That's ironic considering that Florida is the nation's third-largest consumer of energy, and ranks first or second in terms of available biomass feedstocks.
While the state's largest utilities continue to build new fossil-fuel and nuclear-power plants -- and pass those expenses on to ratepayers -- advocates of alternative energy say biomass is getting short shrift at the Legislature.
"It's pretty sad. Other states have far less to offer in feedstock and they're moving forward on bio-energy. We should be at the forefront of this movement," said Ted Sparling, president of Florida Fuel Solutions of Tampa.
"The focus ought to be on the most cost-effective source," said Mark Kaplan of Mosaic Co. The phosphate mining concern that employs 3,100 Floridians has the capability to capture heat and generate power through its industrial processes.
SB 992 does set targets for solar power -- 700 additional megawatts of production by 2012. Coincidentally or not, that figure happens to match the amount proposed by Florida Power & Light.
That may not be the most efficient way to go, however.
"The big investor-owned utilities fly in engineers from out of state to build these big solar arrays, but I haven't been able to find one additional local job, other than at the bed and breakfast where they stay," Antheil said of FPL's 25-megawatt solar farm near Arcadia.
Compared with the expense of harnessing solar power -- running around 44 cents per kilowatt hour -- biomass projects can be more cost-effective, says Andrew Walmsley, assistant director of agriculture policy at Florida Farm Bureau.
Biomass ventures, he added, also have the power to reduce Florida's mass of garbage piling up at those smelly and ever-enlarging landfills derisively known as Mt. Trashmores.
Several companies, including Covanta Energy, convert solid waste to electricity through incineration. Covanta has plants in Lee, Pasco, Hillsborough, Lake and Dade counties.
Rep. Seth McKeel, R-Lakeland, is hopeful that this session's legislation will empower more renewable-energy projects, but he notes that the state must ensure "reliability" through investor-owned utilities.
"It's a balancing act," he says.
Sean Stafford, a lobbyist who has pushed to expand renewable-energy ventures across the state, said sugar grower Florida Crystals generates enough biomass byproducts to produce 140 megawatts of electricity annually. But the paltry 3 1/2 cents-per-kilowatt it would get for that power doesn't make it worth the effort.
"We have a system that prices providers out of the market. I'm hopeful that the House leadership will incentivize renewable energy," Stafford said. "We're where we were six to seven years ago."
Indeed, the percentage of renewables in Florida's total generating capacity has barely budged since the 1990s. After reaching 2.8 percent in 1997, the share dropped to 2 percent in 2007, the latest year for which figures were available.
Antheil favors policies that level the playing field for small energy producers through power purchase agreements.
The city of Gainesville, for example, tacked a $1.50 monthly charge onto its utility bills to compensate small-scale electric producers who feed into the municipal power grid.
Antheil notes that such charges are 10 times smaller than advance cost-recovery assessments granted by the state Public Service Commission to big investor-owned utilities for the construction of new power plants.
Meanwhile, Sparling accuses the government of "misdirecting money to pie-in-the-sky projects." He says that long-term research and development projects are unnecessary luxuries when Florida already has the 10 million acres of agricultural land available to "co-grow" crops for biomass generation today.
In terms of jobs, biomass is far more powerful generators than fossil fuels. Based on employment per million megawatt hours, biomass yields 791 jobs versus just 69 jobs with fossil fuel, according to industry studies.
Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 559-4719.
