Florida Surpasses California In New Solar Installations

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Last Updated on: 29th March 2025, 10:50 am

Florida is a conundrum. Here is this peninsula composed mostly of limestone and sand stuck out in the middle of an ocean that is rising inexorably every year and yet state policy is that no one in any official capacity is allowed to utter the words “climate change.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, limestone dissolves in salt water, making the long-term prospects for the state rather bleak. Historical research shows Florida was once underwater, and in all likelihood, it will be again. Not next week, but relatively soon if you measure time in geological terms.

Last May, Florida enacted a law deleting any reference to climate change from most of its state policies, a move Republican Governor Ron InSantis described as ​“restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.” Green zealotry apparently means looking around, seeing what is happening, and taking reasonable and rational steps to protect the people of the state from harm. But that is a “woke mind virus” for the governorator, apparently, and so Florida will continue to be subsumed by the sea both above and below so long as the Republican thought police are in power.

Oddly enough, against this backdrop of ignorance, Florida has become a national leader in solar power. Last year, it passed California in terms of new utility-scale solar capacity added to its electrical grid. According to Canary Media, it built 3 gigawatts of large-scale solar in 2024. Only Texas added more. In the residential solar sector, Florida has ranked second behind California for the most rooftop solar panels installed each year from 2019 through 2024, according to data supplied by the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. “We do expect Florida to continue as No. 2 in 2025,” said Zoë Gaston, who is the principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie for the US distributed solar industry. Sylvia Martinez, Wood Mackenzie’s principal utility-scale solar analyst for North America, added that Florida is expected to take second place in utility-scale solar installations this year, edging past California again this year and just behind Texas, which has been installing more solar power than any other state for several years running.

Florida Is A Solar Power Leader

Overall, Florida receives about 8 percent of its electricity from solar, according to data provided by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). Most of its electricity comes from burning methane, with a smattering of nuclear energy as well. The state’s success in solar power is the result of its abundant sunshine and policies at the state and federal level that have made panels cheaper and easier to build, advocates say. “Obviously in Florida, sunshine is extremely abundant,” said Zachary Colletti, the executive director of the Florida chapter of Conservatives for Clean Energy. ​“We’ve got plenty of it.”

“Floridians have long understood that not only is solar good for your pocket, it’s also good for your home resilience,” said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, the executive director of The CLEO Institute, a Miami-based nonprofit that advocates for climate action. ​“In the face of increasing extreme weather events, having access to reliable energy is a big motivator.” The tax credits made available by the Inflation Reduction Act have also made buying panels cheaper than ever before, she said. “A lot of people took advantage of that. I’m one of them,” Arditi-Rocha said. ​“As soon as I saw that the federal government was going to give me 30% back on my taxes, I decided to make the investment and got myself a solar system that I could pay back in seven years. It was a win-win proposition.”

Solar started growing in Florida long before Democrats passed the IRA in 2022, Canary Media says, and that is because of favorable state policies. Municipalities and counties in the state have little say about where power plants get located because state law gives the Florida Public Service Commission the ultimate authority over siting and permitting. In addition, solar power plants with a capacity of less than 75 megawatts are exempt from review and permitting altogether under the Florida Power Plant Siting Act. That policy has made building solar farms easy and inexpensive for the state’s major utilities, said Leyva Martinez. Companies such as NextEra Energy, which is owned by Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest electrical utility, have for years patched together many gigawatts of clean renewable energy by bundling the output from several small solar installations.

“We’re seeing this wave of project installations at gigawatt scales, but if you look at what’s actually being built, it’s a small 74 megawatt [project] here or 74.9 megawatt project there,” Martinez said. ​“It’s just easier to permit in the state, and developers have realized that they can keep installations at this range and they don’t need to go through the longer process.” The buildout of those smallish solar installations has prompted some backlash in rural parts of the state.

A bill filed by Republican state senator Keith Truenow last month proposes granting some additional local control over siting and permitting solar farms on agricultural land. “You’re starting to see a lot more complaining about the abundance of solar installations in more rural areas,” Zachary Colletti of Conservatives For Clean Energy said. The legislation “would add some hurdles and ultimately add costs” but ​“wouldn’t necessarily reverse the state’s preemption” of local permitting authorities.

That bill is currently making its way through the Florida Legislature, but even if passed, it will not necessarily be signed into law by the governor, who has previously vetoed legislation that threatened the building of solar power facilities in the Sunshine State. In 2022, he blocked a bill supported by the utility industry that would have ended the state’s net metering program, which pays homeowners with rooftop solar for sending extra electricity back to the grid during the day. “The governor did the right thing by vetoing that bill that would have strangled net metering and a lot of the rooftop solar industry in Florida,” Colletti said. ​“I know Floridians are much better off for it because we are able to offset our costs very well and take more control and ownership over our households.” That doesn’t mean he will do the right thing again, however.

A telephone survey conducted by the pollster Mason-Dixon in February 2022 found that among 625 registered Florida voters, 84% supported net metering, including 76% of self-identified Republicans. “It’s not about left or right,” Arditi-Rocha said. ​“It’s about making sure we live up to our state’s name. In the Sunshine State, the future can be really sunny and bright if we continue to harness the power of the sun.”

Policies Matter

The advantages of making electricity from sunlight would seem to be so blindly obvious that everyone would want to do more of it. But that is not how many humans think. If extracting methane, compressing it, and sending it through pipes directly to thermal generating stations makes some people fabulously wealthy, those people will fight tooth and nail to protect their assets. Joe Manchin did it. Chris Wright, the so-called energy secretary for the United States at the moment, did it. Fossil fuel interests in Texas are doing everything in their power to force utilities to continue burning methane even if it costs more than adding more renewables.

Last year, California upended its rooftop solar industry with new rules that put the kibosh on net metering payments to homeowners unless they included a residential storage battery that can be partially controlled by the utility companies. The benefits baked into the Inflation Reduction Act are now under attack by Elon Muskrat and the MAGAlomaniacs who are determined to rid the US of what they call a “woke mind virus.” The upshot of all this is that doing the right thing by harvesting energy from the sun may be a good thing, but it has become a political football and is always under attack from those who put profits over common sense.

Never assume that because something is good for the people, their political leaders will embrace it. In fact, experience suggests quite the opposite is true. If the people will lead, their leaders will follow. Vote!