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.
