“The legislation would create a cap-and-trade system: Over the next decades, power plants, oil refineries and manufacturers would be required to obtain allowances for the pollution they emit. Those who need more or less could turn to a Wall-Street-like market in the allowances.”
Read the full article from the Washington post here:
Florida legislatures could not agree how to make renewable energy such as wind and solar energy a viable part of the economy and energy structure here in Florida this month. They agreed to disagree and do nothing killing the Governors 20% by 2020 bill. The death of this bill had it’s good and bad. The bill contained no standards for how rate payer money could be spent therefore allowing big utilites to gobble up the money and build huge solar and wind power farms, so it’s good it did not pass. On the flip side, solar and wind are good for the environment regardless of how they are generated.
Yesterday, the House has passed a National Policy, the first of it’s kind to Cap the Green House Gas (GhG) emissions from the big polluters, typically oil, gas and electricity generators. Legislatures have been quoted as saying this will jack up the cost at the retail level to almost all consumers because of the United States heavy dependence on fossile fuels such as Coal, Gasoline and Natural Gas.
Currently the State of Florida produces large percentages of its power from Coal, Natural Gas and Nuclear. Look for updates continually in the local papers as energy producers will likely be filing with the Public Service Commission very shortly to request local rate hikes to hedge agains the additional costs or fines they may incurr because of this new bill.
With the onset of rate hikes eminant and a large portion of money likely to be funneled into the Florida Solar Energy Rebate Program from the Department of Energy through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act now may be a good time to start looking into Residential Solar Power Genereration. You can read the executive summary from the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association online as they are preparing to push 14.4 million into the Solar Rebate Fund. As of yesterday, solar energy investors are able to apply for their solar rebates online, speeding up the process dramatically for capturing their rebate funds once a system is installed.
There is one company in Florida who has already hedged their bets just in case a cap in trade bill came along. It will most likely be considered one of the greatest “power plays’ in history. FPL considers itself to be the largest producer of wind and solar energy in the United States. They also currently opperate the 3rd largest nuclear reactor assets in the United States as well.
So now the big question, will the Federal Bill and our local Public Service Commission allow FPL to buy green energy from out of State? And, if they do allow it will FPL choose to buy it all up for itself or choose to make Billions selling their clean green energy to other utilities who did not have the forsight to make clean energy investments in the past?
