LEEDing the way: Green developments around Florida

Green Demonstration House

In 1994, Sarasota’s Florida House opened as the first of its kind in the U.S., demonstrating green construction materials and methods to builders and residents.

Located on the Sarasota County Technical Institute campus, the bungalow showcased energy-efficient appliances and lights, tile floors made of recycled windshield glass, airtight windows and high ceilings to prevent heat buildup.

In 2009, however, the house was moved to make way for a high school. It then fell dormant until a fundraising effort enabled it to reopen three years ago as a showcase for sustainable retrofits.

Today, Florida House runs on solar power generated from photovoltaic panels on the roof and in the yard. The house also has eco-friendly bamboo kitchen cabinets and cork floors, high-efficiency air conditioning, wind-resistant windows that deflect heat from the sun, and a shaded car-charging station for electric vehicles. The yard features native plants, edible fruits and vegetables, a chicken coop, beehives for honey production, permeable pavers and cisterns that collect and reuse rainwater.

“The focus has shifted to green living and incorporating new technologies,” says Michele Mician, executive director of the non-profit Florida House Institute, which operates the demonstration home. “It doesn’t have to be expensive. You can do a little bit at a time. The first thing to do is seal your house and look for leaks.”

Green Business Space

More than 115 million square feet of business space in Florida is LEED-certified — the equivalent of 191 Empire State Buildings. All told, about 3,310 commercial projects statewide are LEED-certified or LEED-registered.

This year, Manatee County became the state’s first government to earn platinum status by the Florida Green Building Coalition. The county’s green measures include making a new downtown Bradenton chiller plant energy efficient (photo left), transitioning to single-stream recycling (allowing residents to mix together plastic, glass, paper and metal in hopes of increasing recycling rates) and sponsoring such events as a teen fashion show featuring recycled clothing.

Green Home Improvement Financing

Leon County has teamed with Florida Development Finance Corp. and San Diego-based Renovate America to provide financing for energysaving home improvements.

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing covers the cost of solar panels, wind-resistant windows and other upgrades for homeowners with at least 10% equity. Homeowners repay the debt via an assessment on their property tax bills over five to 25 years.

The county says the financing program will help residents “go solar, protect their families from storms or replace a broken HVAC with an energy-efficient upgrade.” The county also says jobs are created through the expansion of the local home improvement market. More than a dozen contractors and vendors have been certified for the program.

Nationally, PACE has drawn some criticism from Realtors, who say homeowners don’t always understand that the debt is tied to their property and can cause problems when they try to sell or refinance a mortgage.

Utility-Scale Solar

Lower equipment costs and technological improvements are fueling a boom in solar farms across the state. Since 2009, the price for utility-scale solar has dropped 85%, bringing solar closer to the price of conventional power generation.

Led by utility-owned solar, Florida’s solar industry is projected to add four times as much capacity over the next five years as it did in the past five years.

Duke Energy Florida has abandoned plans to build a nuclear plant in west Florida and instead will install 700 megawatts of solar capacity. The utility expects to spend $6 billion on solar panels, battery storage, grid-modernization projects and electric vehicle charging areas over the next four years.

Juno Beach-based FPL is developing eight solar plants with enough capacity to power 120,000 homes. Gulf Power recently installed three solar plants at military bases in northwest Florida. And Tampa Electric, which built its first utility-scale solar project in 2016, now plans to add 600 megawatts of solar at 10 sites across west-central Florida over the next four years. When the projects are complete, nearly 7% of TECO’s energy generation will come from solar power.

In Tallahassee, the first of two planned solar farms, a 20-megawatt facility, is under construction at the airport. The second facility is to have twice as much capacity when it comes online in 2019. Origis Energy will build, own and operate the solar farms for Tallahassee’s municipal electric utility, and the city will pay for energy fed into the grid.

Orlando Utilities Commission has doubled its solar energy production with a new plant in east Orange County. Orlando’s city council unanimously passed a resolution in August calling for 100% renewable energy use in the city by 2050.

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