Miami-Dade Schools wants 100% clean energy. A new report deems that nearly impossible
Earlier this year, Miami Dade County Public Schools made the boldest commitment to renewable energy of any major school district in the county — to receive 100% of its power from clean, renewable energy sources by 2030.
That’s not going to happen. A new draft plan released Wednesday by the district’s clean energy task force made clear that the goal is impossible without a 180 by the monopoly utility in the state or the district suddenly having the entire state’s budget at its disposal.
The school board’s sole energy provider — Florida Power & Light — has made no plans to commit to 100% renewable energy at any point. The alternative would be for the school board to create and store all of its own power. That amounts to a multi-billion dollar nonstarter.
The report estimated that installing the solar panels necessary to power the entire district could cost roughly $500 million, and that’s if the district is also able to cut its energy usage by 25%.
But the battery backup needed to sustain power at night and on shady days is far pricier. The report estimates it could cost about $95 billion in today’s dollars to store just half of the power generated by the district. By 2025, that price may drop to $56 billion as batteries become more affordable, which is still about eight times the entire district’s annual budget.
“Neither option is currently a viable path given FPL’s investments in natural gas, the current technologies, high cost of battery storage and the high maintenance costs of essentially managing its own utility,” the report concluded.
FPL’s decision to only reach about 40% renewable energy by 2030 has stymied other South Florida clean energy plans as well.
The city of Miami’s goal to slash its emissions in half by 2035 can’t be achieved without 100% clean energy from FPL. Miami-Dade’s recent emissions reduction plan fell short of its goal due to the county’s reliance on FPL for energy, as well as emissions from airline fuel.
Despite that downer top line, the report contains dozens of policy suggestions to make the district greener and slash emissions ranging from energy efficiency to replacing 999 diesel buses with electric ones, installing more solar power on schools and teaching students more about sustainability.
“We are tip of the spear in terms of impacts here, with sea level rise and extreme heat, and we have an absolutely amazing opportunity to lead this community and this nation in terms of this conversion to a clean energy economy,” Jane Gilbert, chair of the clean energy task force and chief heat officer for Miami-Dade County, told the school board Wednesday night.
Members of the school board were enthusiastic, praising the clean energy task force and lauding the lofty goals within the draft plan, including one bold strategy that no other South Florida emissions plan mentions: lobbying FPL directly to encourage the utility to lower its emissions.
The report suggests partnering with Miami-Dade County, cities and other large corporate FPL customers like Microsoft and Google to form a coalition to push for stronger action.
“You’re a top-five customer for FPL and Miami-Dade is the top. You’ve got a lot of buying power here,” Gilbert said.
Michele Drucker, a parent and vice-chair of the Clean Energy Task Force, was the one to originally suggest the goal to the school board. She said an FPL representative attends every task force meeting, and they repeatedly remind the county and the school district that it is on the waiting list for FPL’s Solar Together program, which allows customers to opt in to additional fees to help FPL build more solar farms and then claim that newly built clean energy as their own.
“That’s not what we want. We don’t want to subsidize their solar farms out in the fields in Orlando, we want them to build solar panels on our roofs,” Drucker said.
She said it seemed like FPL seemed more interested in protecting its business interests than helping the district (or cities) meet its goal. Drucker also pointed to the two rate hikes FPL recently won approval for — $1.5 billion over four years and $800 million in 2022 alone — as evidence that the district needs to move fast on installing their own solar before energy prices spike further.
The draft report also suggests an idea that resilience officers and emergency management professionals have floated for years: installing solar panels and battery backup on the school buildings used as hurricane shelters, using federal grants from FEMA.
Another big idea in the report was converting school buses to electric buses, which don’t emit the same atmosphere-warming and health-harming fumes as fossil fuel-powered vehicles. Plus, the battery installed in each bus means it could serve as a backup power source for a school-turned-shelter after a hurricane. Miami-Dade has 50 electric buses already on the way, thanks to a national settlement from Volkswagen after the company’s emissions scandal.
Drucker is also eyeing provisions in the federal Build Back Better Act, which is currently working its way through the Senate, that would give schools a 30% credit toward any solar installation and fund tens of thousands of electric school buses across the country. If it passes, she said it would make the district’s goal much more achievable.
“We’re at a point where we have money and access to financing and tech that just hasn’t been present before,” she said. “Taking a wait and see approach is not how we want to go. We want to be at the front of line.”
The task force plans to issue its final report in February.
This story was originally published December 10, 2021 at 8:36 AM.
