By Arielle Perry, FAU Center for Environmental Studies
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) is a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of clean and efficient energy in the Southeast. SACE recently released the sixth edition of its annual “Energy Efficiency in the Southeast” report, which ranks the energy efficiency performance of utilities in the region.
Click here to read the full report. Here are some highlights:
- Utilities can encourage energy efficiency by offering energy efficiency programs, incentives and rebates to customers, according to SACE.
- Utility energy efficiency programs can help both consumers and utility companies save money by decreasing the total amount of energy required to power a home.
- The Southeast continues to lag behind the rest of the country in energy efficiency savings as a percentage of electricity sales (0.21%), consistently falling below the national average (0.50%) and behind all other regions in the U.S.
- Florida was one of the worst-performing states in terms of efficiency programs funded by its utilities. Florida’s energy savings constituted 0.11% of utility retail sales, below both the national and regional average and beneath all but two states in the Southeast.
- Florida continues to rely extensively on fossil fuels, with 70% of the state’s total power generated by natural gas.
- The report states that Florida’s insufficient utility energy efficiency programs “deprive” families of a “valuable tool” to help lower their energy bills.
- The state’s largest utility, Florida Power and Light (FPL), ranked second to last (0.05% in energy efficiency savings as a percentage of the amount of electricity sold. ) on the report’s list of energy efficiency performance of Florida’s utilities.
- The top three Florida utilities with the highest energy efficiency performance were the Orlando Utilities Commission (0.31%), JEA (0.26%), and the Tampa Electric Company (0.23%).
- The report found that FPL has marginally improved its energy efficiency performance as compared to previous years, expanding its low-income energy efficiency program to a total of 17,000 homes.
- More than 150,000 Florida households have claimed federal energy efficiency tax credits funded by the federal Inflation Reduction Act, saving a total of $130 million on their taxes.
- Florida received federal approval for more than $345 million in federal home energy efficiency rebates, but more details are not known due to the change in administrations.
Arielle Perry is a master’s student in the Environmental Science Program at Florida Atlantic University and is a graduate research assistant at FAU’s Center for Environmental Studies. The center manages The Invading Sea. Banner photo: High voltage electricity towers (iStock image).
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