Florida is now a solar superpower. Here’s how it happened. todayheadline

Last May, Florida enacted a law deleting any reference to climate change from most of its state policies, a move Republican Governor Ron DeSantis described as ​“restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”

That hasn’t stopped the Sunshine State from becoming a national leader in solar power.

In a first, Florida vaulted past California last year in terms of new utility-scale solar capacity plugged into its grid. It built 3 gigawatts of large-scale solar in 2024, making it second only to Texas. And in the residential solar sector, Florida continued its longtime leadership streak. The state has ranked number two behind California for the most rooftop panels installed each year from 2019 through 2024, according to data the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie shared with Canary Media.

“We do expect Florida to continue as number two in 2025,” said Zoë Gaston, Wood Mackenzie’s principal U.S. distributed solar analyst.

Florida is expected to again be neck and neck with California for this year’s second-place spot in utility-scale solar installations, said Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Wood Mackenzie’s principal utility-scale solar analyst for North America.

Overall, the state receives about 8 percent of its electricity from solar, according to Solar Energy Industries Association data. The vast majority of its power comes from fossil gas.

The state’s solar surge is the result of weather — both good and bad — 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.”

The state is also facing a growing number of extreme storms. Of the 94 billion-dollar weather disasters that federal data shows unfolded in Florida since 1980, 34 occurred in the last five years.

“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 available under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, 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 percent 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.”

But solar started growing in Florida long before Democrats passed the IRA in 2022, and that’s thanks to favorable state policies.

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Municipalities and counties have little say over power plants, giving the Florida Public Service Commission ultimate control over siting and permitting. Plus, solar plants with a capacity under 75 megawatts are exempt from review and permitting altogether under the Florida Power Plant Siting Act.

The latter policy in particular has made building solar farms easy and inexpensive for the state’s major utilities, said Leyva Martinez. Companies such as NextEra Energy–owned Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest electrical utility, have for years patched together gigawatts of solar with small farms.

“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 a 74.9-megawatt project there,” she 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 solar buildout has prompted some backlash in rural parts of the state. A bill Republican state Senator Keith Truenow filed 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,” Colletti said. The legislation, he said, ​“would add some hurdles and ultimately add costs” but ​“wouldn’t necessarily reverse the state’s preemption” of local permitting authorities.

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NextEra and Florida Power & Light did not respond to an email requesting comment. Nor did Truenow return a call. 

While the bill is currently making its way through the Legislature, DeSantis previously vetoed legislation that threatened Florida’s solar buildout.

In 2022, the governor blocked a utility-backed bill to end 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.”

A telephone survey conducted by the pollster Mason-Dixon in February 2022 found that among 625 registered Florida voters, 84 percent supported net metering, including 76 percent 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.”