Transcripts

"Green Options"-Governor Charlie Crist's Climate for Change Conference

SUZANNE PRATT: Florida Governor Charlie Crist convened his second annual climate change conference in Miami today. One of the big announcements from that meeting is about solar power and Florida's largest publicly held utility FPL Group. The sunshine state has no commercial solar power installations. But as we continue our ongoing series "Green Options," Jeff Yastine reports that's about to change in a very big way.

JEFF YASTINE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Florida has lots of sun, but it also has lots of clouds, which interrupt how much electricity a solar power plant can produce. That's why the Mojave desert and other arid, cloudless regions of the southwest are home to most of the nation's major solar power plants. Now FPL wants to build not one, not two, but three solar power installations in the state, with more than on hundred megawatts of capacity. Which begs the question: if Florida was thought to be inefficient for commercial solar because of its clouds, what changed? Flower Power and Light says there are two reasons -- high oil prices and a belief that carbon dioxide emissions from smokestacks like those will soon be regulated. That means that carbon dioxide will no longer be free. It will be a cost to FPL's bottom line. And that's why FPL VP of development, Eric Silagy says commercial solar power in Florida now makes business sense.

ERIC SILAGY, VP DEVELOPMENT, FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT: Carbon legislation, which we believe will pass this year and next year and we believe it should pass, then you'll see also an additional value to the customers, in so far as the value of the project will be greater and the cost will be less.

YASTINE: Less because solar power plants, unlike coal or gas-fired plants, have no greenhouse gas emissions. Climate and energy analyst Peter Fusaro says if it makes sense in Florida.

PETER FUSARO, CHAIRMAN, GLOBAL CHANGE ASSOCIATES: It actually makes sense in every state. For example, Germany did not have a solar industry in 1990. They now have the most progressed solar industry and they don't have a lot of sun. The have a lot of cloud cover, intermittency issues.

YASTINE: Advancements in solar power technology are also at play in FPL's decision, says Ernst & Young's clean technologies director Joseph Muscat.

JOSEPH MUSCAT, DIR. OF CLEANTECH, ERNST & YOUNG: You can think of it as comparable to the semiconductor industry, where what they we really trying to do was stuff more transistors onto a particular wafer. So I think you're seeing the very same activities within a square centimeter with a solar panel. How much electricity equivalency can you get out of that?

YASTINE: FPL expects regulatory approval soon and hopes to start construction by year's end, finally turning the sunshine state into the solar power state. Jeff Yastine, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Fort Lauderdale.