St. Petersburg, FL, is the first city in Florida to agree to use 100 percent clean and renewable energy, according to a Sierra Club announcement reported at Yahoo News.
The city has allocated $250,000 of settlement funds from the BP oil spill to create the roadmap to total renewable energy. The story says that only 11 percent of customers of Florida utilities own a renewable generating system in 2015. There are 19 cities in the United States that have made such a pledge.
The story also said that voters on Nov. 8 rejected what it says was a misleading solar energy amendment that would have made switching to solar energy more difficult.
Waste to energy plants are an important tool in the drive to renewable energy. One-fifth of the plants are located in Florida. Last year, Florida’s Palm Beach Renewable Energy Facility 2 became both the largest and the first new waste to energy plant to come online since 1995. In all, however, waste to energy is not a huge deal: It accounted, according to EIA, for only 0.4 percent of energy generated in the country last year.
