Florida is now a solar superpower. Here’s how it happened.

Last May, Florida enacted a law deleting any reference to climate change from most of its state policies, a move Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis described as ​“restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”

That hasn’t stopped the Sunshine State from becoming a national leader in solar power.

In a first, Florida vaulted past California last year in terms of new utility-scale solar capacity plugged into its grid. It built 3 gigawatts of large-scale solar in 2024, making it second only to Texas. And in the residential solar sector, Florida continued its longtime leadership streak. The state has ranked No. 2 behind California for the most rooftop panels installed each year from 2019 through 2024, according to data the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie shared with Canary Media.

“We do expect Florida to continue as No. 2 in 2025,” said Zoë Gaston, Wood Mackenzie’s principal U.S. distributed solar analyst.

Florida is expected to again be neck and neck with California for this year’s second-place spot in utility-scale solar installations, said Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Wood Mackenzie’s principal utility-scale solar analyst for North America.

Overall, the state receives about 8% of its electricity from solar, according to Solar Energy Industries Association data. The vast majority of its power comes from fossil gas.

The state’s solar surge is the result of weather — both good and bad — and policies at the state and federal level that have made panels cheaper and easier to build, advocates say. 

“Obviously in Florida, sunshine is extremely abundant,” said Zachary Colletti, the executive director of the Florida chapter of Conservatives for Clean Energy. ​“We’ve got plenty of it.”

The state is also facing a growing number of extreme storms. Of the 94 billion-dollar weather disasters that federal data show unfolded in Florida since 1980, 34 occurred in the last five years.

“Floridians have long understood that not only is solar good for your pocket, it’s also good for your home resilience,” said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, the executive director of The CLEO Institute, a Miami-based nonprofit that advocates for climate action. ​“In the face of increasing extreme weather events, having access to reliable energy is a big motivator.”

The tax credits available under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act have also made buying panels cheaper than ever before, she said.

“A lot of people took advantage of that. I’m one of them,” Arditi-Rocha said. ​“As soon as I saw that the federal government was going to give me 30% back on my taxes, I decided to make the investment and got myself a solar system that I could pay back in seven years. It was a win-win proposition.”