Promoting Clean Energy

Florida has vast “strategic reserves” of energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy. Virtually every part of our economy has the potential to use energy more efficiently, from the appliances we use in our kitchens, to the windows we use in our office buildings and the motors we use in our factories. With new energy-efficienct technology, clean solar power, crop-based energy sources, and low-emission vehicles, Florida can reduce its dependence on dirty energy sources and chart a smarter, cleaner energy future.

•    Environment Florida supports changes to regulations that tie utility profits to electricity sales and thus discourage utility investment in a full range of energy efficiency and conservation programs. We also support requiring utilities to meet a percentage of new energy needs with energy efficiency, and reforming utility rate structures to give utilities incentives to maximize investment in efficiency and clean energy.

•     Environment Florida supports requiring utilities to generate a percentage of their electricity from clean, renewable sources, and policies like net metering and interconnection standards that facilitate new renewable energy projects.

•    Environment Florida supports expanding energy efficiency requirements for building codes and appliances, and incentives to encourage the use of energy efficient cars, appliances, products and technologies.

•     Environment Florida supports incentives to facilitate the development and deployment of new renewable energy, particularly for solar, wind and ocean energy.  Environment Florida opposes state subsidies that promote the use of dirty energy sources including municipal solid waste incineration, nuclear power and coal.

Renewing Florida Forever

For nearly two decades, Florida has been a national leader in preservation, safeguarding more than 2 million acres of natural lands. The state’s programs have been funded through long-term bond issues secured with dedicated funding from real estate transfer fees. However, the purchasing power of the state’s preservation dollars has declined over time, and Florida faces important decisions about the future of its preservation efforts when the Florida Forever program expires in 2010.

•    Environment Florida supports the establishment of a successor to the Florida Forever program, and increasing the funding level from $300 million to $600 million per year to keep up with the state’s explosive growth and increasing real-estate prices.

Tackling Global Warming

Our beautiful coastline and tropical climate draw tens of thousands of visitors and new residents and help make the Sunshine State a leading producer of fresh fruit and vegetables, horticulture and livestock. However, global warming poses severe threats to Florida, from stronger hurricanes, to extended droughts, to coastal flooding from rising sea levels.  

•    Environment Florida supports policies to achieve global warming pollution reductions of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, in accordance with Gov. Crist’s executive orders.

Working For Healthy Oceans

Florida’s beaches and ocean waters play an important role in our economy and in the life and culture of communities along our coastline.  Unfortunately, the health of our oceans is at risk from pollution and from dangerous proposals in Congress to open Florida’s waters to oil and gas drilling.  

Routine drilling operations dump thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the marine environment, and a catastrophic spill—one that could spoil the ecology and economic value of a beach for generations—is a real possibility.

In addition, gambling vessels sailing out of Florida ports routinely dump thousands of pounds of inadequately treated sewage into our coastal waters, threatening the marine ecosystem, and potentially contaminating fish caught in those waters. 

•    Environment Florida supports SB 426 & HB 221, sponsored by Sens. Bennett, Gaetz, Geller and Jones, and Reps. Richter and Hooper, urging Florida’s congressional delegation to work together to block efforts to open Florida’s coastal waters to new oil and gas drilling.

•    Environment Florida supports the Clean Oceans Act (SB 1024), sponsored by Sen. Constantine to limit sewage dumping by gambling vessels in Florida’s coastal waters.

Preserving Wild Florida

The Florida Keys, Everglades, pristine panhandle beaches, our state park system—these treasures are a big part of what makes Florida special. Our natural areas provide us with beautiful places to take our families for a swim or nature hike, and give us a glimpse into Florida’s natural heritage.

•    Environment Florida supports legislation to provide $100 million for Everglades restoration and an additional $100 million for the Northern Everglades, including Lake Okeechobee and Estuary Recovery, from either cash or bonds.
 
•    Environment Florida opposes legislation to allow the siting of transmission lines across public lands if it would diminish the ecological value of lands bought for conservation purposes.

•    Environment Florida supports legislation to support Department of Community Affairs Secretary Tom Pelham’s proposal to increase citizen participation in land use decisions including making amendments to land use plans more difficult.

Protecting Florida’s Water

Florida’s springs, rivers and lakes are among our most precious resources. They provide habitat for wildlife, clean drinking water for residents, and some of the state’s most visited attractions.

Unfortunately, rampant development threatens many of our most treasured waters. Powerful developers want to divert water from north Florida rivers to support unsustainable development in central Florida, and industrial and municipal facilities continue to discharge large amounts of toxic chemicals and other pollution that threatens our environment, our health and Florida’s economy.

We need to protect Florida’s water supply and plan for sustainable growth.

•    Environment Florida supports changes to state water permitting laws to make water conservation a mandatory condition of receiving a consumptive use permit and to require water management districts to prescribe water conservation practices.

•    Environment Florida supports the right of city and county governments to establish programs and standards designed to limit pollution of local waterways and wetlands from fertilizer and other sources of run-off pollution.

•    Environment Florida supports policies to assure adequate flow from the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint River system into Apalachicola Bay in order to sustain this unique and economically important ecosystem.

•    Environment Florida supports HB 31 to establish the Florida Springs Stewardship Task Force and legislation to create pilot springs regulations.

•    Environment Florida supports a $10 million appropriation for the state share of Florida Keys wastewater treatment upgrades.

•    Environment Florida supports legislation to create a planning and conservation area for Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands and require that all land uses in the area support restoration goals.

•    Environment Florida supports SB 730 by Sen. Victor Crist to protect certain water bodies from contamination by limiting the construction or expansion of nearby landfills.