Florida's District 28
“The greatest tool Floridians have to see legislative change is their voice,”
Dorothy Hukill - sponsored a $5 million rebate fund
that for several years has offered rebates to people who install solar panels.
She was involved with the 2008 governor's energy bill to allow "net-metering,"
which allows people with solar-energy systems
to receive credit for $$$electricity they produce$$$ and send it back to the grid.
Solar Promise Being Broken
Promises, Promises:
Chasing an elusive pledge
Future of Florida
solar rebate plan cloudy
BREVARD COUNTY, Florida -- On sunny days,
Harry Jacobs grins as
he watches his electric meter go backward
and his solar panels start to pay off.
"Right now, it's just a promise,"
said the 69-year-old retiree who lives in the Great Outdoors RV resort in Titusville.
Jacobs is among more than
3,000 Floridians who applied
during the past five months for solar rebates from the state.
About 1,300 applicants have been approved for a combined $2.8 million in rebates, and the other 1,700 are awaiting approval.
But there's no money left to pay them!!!!
The level of interest in the program was so great that,
by the time people had applied,
this year's $5 million pool of rebate money
had been swallowed up by applicants already on the wait list.

Building the Transatlantic Climate Bridge
A new age of fuel is budding, bubbling and brewing in local lab beakers, garages and orange groves,
promising to break up the nation's love affair with foreign oil.

H.R. 364
establishes an
Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E)
within the U.S. Department of Energy,
similar to the successful DARPA program within the Department of Defense.
With a lean and agile organization ARPA-E will assemble cross-disciplinary research teams focused on addressing the nation's most urgent energy needs through high-risk research and the rapid development of transformational clean energy technologies.

By leveraging talent in all sectors - from private industry, to universities, to government labs - ARPA-E will foster a robust and cohesive community of energy researchers and technology developers in the U.S. This bill follows on the direct recommendations of the
National Academy of Sciences’ report
“Rising Above the Gathering Storm."
A Vision for a Green Economy and Equitable Development

Volusia economic summit will be Tuesday
Ludmilla Lelis | Sentinel Staff Writer
September 28, 2008
VOLUSIA COUNTY - The first annual Volusia Economic Development Summit is scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday at the Lakeside Community Center, 1999 City Center Circle, Port Orange.
Local officials, community business leaders and economic-development experts
will discuss the creation of high-paying jobs in Volusia,
and ways the county can expand its economy.
State Rep. Dorothy L. Hukill,
will moderate the round-table panel.
Our choices matter!
Florida Solar Energy Center is sending a representative to Deltona
THURSDAY, JUNE 5th, 2008 7PM
Our guest speaker for this meeting will be Dave Click from the Florida Solar Energy Center at UCF. Dave will speak on practical solar solutions for homeowners including the benefits of solar water heating and solar power, as well as what you should do first to get your home or business ready for solar energy!
We think:
Congress needs to renew incentives to promote alternative energy
The first time Pam and John Par's
electric meter reversed direction,
indicating that their home was producing more electricity than they were using,
they celebrated with a bottle of champagne

Oil giant Saudi
to become solar power centre
- oil minister
In the last few years,
as the
Middle Eastern Gulf nations
have begun to worry
about the eventual need
to convert from an oil-based economy
to a knowledge-based economy,
they have started offering lavish inducements to
American universities
to bring their expertise
to the region.
Florida should forget about drilling in gulf
The Senate has the answers it needs to tell Cannon to forget about drilling.
Drilling off Florida's coast won't increase America's independence from foreign oil, lower gasoline prices or raise billions of dollars annually for the state. • Those are among the predictable findings of a new nonpartisan report on offshore drilling commissioned by the Florida Senate president.
It is inconceivable that any responsible state lawmaker
still would consider leveraging the state's pristine shoreline
— and the tourism customers it draws —
for such little return.
Yet Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Orlando,
who is in line to be the next House speaker,
is doggedly pushing a plan that could put drilling platforms within 10 miles of the west coast.

The report produced by a Tallahassee think tank offers some of the best information yet to refute the propaganda from an anonymous oil industry group, Florida Energy Associates, that wants Florida's ban lifted. The report shows that the most-generous industry estimates for what Florida could collect from drilling in state and federal waters is far less than $2 billion — the annual amount suggested by the energy group's economist.
The Collins Center for Public Policy produced "Potential Impacts of Oil & Gas Exploration in the Gulf" on behalf of the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida, a group set up by the Legislature in 2005 and chaired by former St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker, a Republican. Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, asked the commission to take on the issue late last year due to concerns about a lack of neutral information on drilling.
The 40-page report uses a question-and-answer format to address 31 issues that have arisen since Florida Energy Associates began its push last year. It says the risk of a devastating oil spill off Florida's coasts has greatly diminished due to technology and safety precautions since the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. But it also acknowledges the risk remains whether the drilling occurs in state waters close to shore or in the federal waters of the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Most striking:
Researchers don't think there is even enough oil in state waters
to sustain the country's gasoline needs
for a week.
Advances in seismic technology may make it easier to find natural gas deposits, the report said. But it's not been tested in either the eastern gulf or near Florida. And harvesting natural gas in Florida would displace American-mined coal as a fuel, not foreign oil. The impact on energy costs would be minimal.
The report also states the obvious: Lifting Florida's ban would make it more likely Congress would lift its 2006 ban on the more profitable resources farther out in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which extends as much as 125 miles from Florida's shore. The industry's endgame may be to get the drilling ban in state waters lifted merely to make it impossible to continue with the ban in federal waters.

But the eastern gulf doesn't have nearly the deposits found in the federal waters of the central and western gulf — the areas that benefit Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. And none of those states have received windfalls anywhere close to $2 billion annually from offshore drilling.
If the federal ban was lifted, Florida's annual share of revenues could be as low as $20 million (based on traditional government estimates) to as high as $180 million (based on industry estimates), according to the report. New jobs would number between 1,000 to 2,500.

The report purposely does not estimate revenues from drilling in state waters, except to say they would likely be less than those of other states with greater deposits. Alabama generates the most income from near-shore production: $200 million a year. What does $200 million buy in Florida? Not much compared to a $66 billion state budget. Or compared to the potential risk to the No. 1 industry, tourism.

Supporters of drilling off Florida's shores are evoking a patriotic duty to solve America's dependence on foreign oil. Cannon warns of riots in the streets if Floridians cannot get food because there is no fuel for trucks to deliver to groceries. But these are the facts: The estimated deposits in Florida's state-owned waters aren't even enough to fuel America's needs for a week, and lifting the drilling ban would provide relatively little money for the state. It would open the beaches and the state's tourism industry to additional risk — regardless of new drilling technology.
The Senate has the answers it needs to tell Cannon to forget about drilling.

Drilling in Florida waters
The state owns submerged lands from the coast to 10 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and three miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. Here are some statistics that speak to drilling issues.
100 million
Government estimates of barrels of oil in state- owned water
140 million
Barrels of oil the U.S. uses in a week, or 20 million barrels a day
Unknown
What Florida could collect from drilling in state-owned waters, though experts expect less than other gulf states because of geological formations.
$200 million
Average annual amount Alabama collects for drilling in its state-owned waters — the most of any gulf state.
$189 million
Amount the Florida Lottery is expected to raise this year to enhance the state's education offerings
$66 billion
Florida's 2009-2010 state budget
Source: Potential Impacts of Oil & Gas Exploration in the Gulf, Collins Center for Public Policy; 2009 Florida General Appropriations Act (SB 2600)

Our choices matter!
54,000 -180,000
JOBS LOST!
That's the estimated number of new jobs in renewable energy being left on the table
by the Florida House as the 2009 Legislature draws to a close.

This, at a time when
800,000 Floridians are out of work!

The renewable energy bill the House has evidently decided to kill this year
was not a
surprise bill sprung on the public
at the last minute.
This year was an important because Crist is widely expected to run for a
U.S. Senate race in 2010,
making him essentially a lame duck governor next year
and
leaving the state without a prominent Republican energy reform advocate.
We asked you: How did Florida's Legislature do?
Give them a grade!
May 7, 2009
A: Lawmakers did very good work under difficult circumstances. 1.9%

B: A decent enough job overall. 1.8%

C: Mediocre at best. 7.4%

D: At least they got a budget, shoddy as it is. 15.8%

F: They did almost nothing right. 73.1%
It is so sad.
It's like we have a bunch of clowns.

Albert Einstein
wasn't an economist,
but the theory of conservation of energy
has more to offer a world in financial crisis
than a generation of economists.
Why isn't Florida,
The Sunshine State,
leading the WORLD in solar energy?!?!?