How close is St. Petersburg to its clean energy promise? It doesn't know. - Tampa Bay Times

How close is St. Petersburg to its clean energy promise? It doesn’t know.

St. Petersburg made history in 2016 when it became the first city in Florida to commit to switching to clean energy, citing the threat rising seas pose to a place surrounded by water on three sides.

By 2019, it had produced a detailed plan with an ambitious goal: Homes, businesses and all other infrastructure within city limits would be completely powered by renewable energy by 2035.

But five years after that plan was adopted, the city doesn’t know whether it’s on track because it doesn’t have data on where its electricity comes from.

Based on limited information officials recently received from Duke Energy, though, the city is using more energy than at any point in at least the last decade — pushing it further behind an intermediary goal that the city reduce energy use.

City Council member Richie Floyd, who recently became chairperson of the council’s energy and sustainability committee, has been calling for Duke to hand over more data.

“I’m incredibly frustrated and am going to continue to insist that we get this information,” he said. “If we’re not getting the information from our energy provider that we really are entitled to, what are we doing?”

Duke Energy spokesperson Ana Gibbs said it’s not possible for the utility to specify sources of the electricity used within St. Petersburg city limits. It only calculates its fuel mix from a statewide perspective.

“Once a power plant transfers power onto the grid, it cannot be determined (subdivided) how much of that power came from a particular generating source such as solar or natural gas,” Gibbs wrote in an email. “Another way to describe it is, we cannot follow electrons as they flow through the grid to determine their final destination.”

The most recent statewide figures show nearly 79% of Duke Energy Florida’s electricity came from burning natural gas, a fossil fuel, while about 5% came from solar, the only renewable source listed.

Overall, Florida has the fifth-highest reliance on natural gas of any state in the country, according to federal data analyzed by statistics firm Find Energy. It ranks behind 13 other states and the District of Columbia for the proportion of its energy that comes from solar.

James Scott, the chairperson of the Sierra Club Florida’s executive committee, said St. Petersburg has not been taking the clean energy goal seriously. He was part of the original campaign in 2016 to push the city to make the pledge, and has watched with disappointment as he said officials failed to take basic steps.

“The only right thing to do is say, ‘Hey, here’s the data. It’s not good. We’ve been asleep on the job the last five years on this, but now we’re going to do: blank,’” Scott said. “Am I optimistic that’s going to happen? No.”

Far off track

Officials knew it wouldn’t be easy to hit the 2035 clean energy target. The 2019 Clean Energy Roadmap report that laid out steps to meet the goal states that it “will only be achieved through aggressive and immediate action.” That same year, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor, announced that St. Petersburg would receive more than $2 million worth of technical support from his philanthropic organization to help the city meet its carbon reduction initiatives.

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The first step, consultants hired by the city wrote, would be to reduce how much energy the city uses so that it takes fewer solar panels and other equipment to transition to clean power. To do this, government officials, businesses and residents would need to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings on a mass scale. St. Petersburg would have to reduce its energy use by 25% between 2016 and 2025, and then more by 2035.

But earlier this year, Duke Energy provided data on energy consumption that showed the city is far off track. Instead of decreasing demand, citywide consumption has gone up almost 11% since 2016.

Alizza Punzalan-Randle, a city spokesperson who works in the office of Mayor Ken Welch, attributed the increase to a booming population and record-breaking summer temperatures.

Floyd said these findings show why he’s pushing for conversations about the clean energy goal.

“We set this goal and it’s time for us to be accountable,” he said.

Tension with Duke

Scott, from the Sierra Club, said it’s not just data that’s missing. The city should have already installed enough solar panels on municipal buildings to generate the energy they use.

According to the city’s 2019 report, municipal operations produce just 3% of greenhouse gas emissions citywide. But government officials could set an example if they used clean energy for city operations, Scott said.

“The fact that that work hasn’t been done yet speaks volumes,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot of time.”

The Sierra Club has also been pushing for more clean energy requirements for the redevelopment of Tropicana Field.

Punzalan-Randle pointed to multiple city initiatives, like switching out streetlights to LED bulbs, installing electric vehicle chargers and improving or adding solar panels to City Hall, the new police headquarters, the Pier and recreation centers, as examples of progress. Some of these projects were the result of partnerships with Duke, she said.

The city government also subscribes to a Duke program called Clean Energy Connection. As part of the program, subscribers pay an extra fee on their electric bills to receive more energy from solar. In exchange, they get a gradually increasing credit on their bills. Generally, subscribers end up paying a little more on monthly bills for the first eight or nine years, around which time the credit overtakes the subscription fee, according to a presentation last month to council members by Derick Farfan, lead strategy and planning manager at Duke.

Council member Brandi Gabbard said she hopes that any decisions about whether to increase the city’s subscription will involve the council and won’t be handled solely by Duke and the mayor’s office.

“I just don’t want this to be something that happens in the back rooms and doesn’t get discussed out here in the light. Period,” she said during last month’s meeting.

Floyd was not impressed.

“It sounded like a corporate black box that we don’t really have any control over,” he said afterward.

Looming over the discussion was that the city’s legal agreement with Duke is up for renewal in 2026. Both Gabbard and Floyd have floated the idea of splitting off and forming a municipal utility if Duke isn’t sufficiently cooperative with its clean energy goals. The threat has been made before. The 2019 report notes that St. Petersburg was “seeking a much bolder commitment from Duke Florida” and that the city may be forced to form its own utility “if such progress is not met” on key milestones.

“Duke Energy prides itself in supporting the vitality of the communities we serve and look forward to delivering innovative solutions to help the city of St. Petersburg achieve its clean energy goals for many years to come,” Gibbs, from Duke, said in an email.

While Welch’s administration must negotiate the new agreement with Duke, the City Council has to approve it. Welch has previously said he wants a “detailed analysis” of the pros and cons of leaving Duke. He cited his past experience working for one of Duke’s predecessors, Florida Power, in giving him a full understanding of the infrastructure that would be required for the city to step in.

“You don’t take anything off the table at this point,” he said earlier this year.

Times staff writer Colleen Wright contributed to this report.