TALLAHASSEE - After years of planning, the U.S. will finally be on the map when it comes to renewable energy, and Gainesville is the city that will put it there.
The Florida Alliance for Renewable Energy held a conference in Tallahassee Wednesday to discuss renewable energy plans for Florida, of which Gainesville is the leader.
Feed-in tariffs, a renewable energy policy that offers payments to electricity developers for the electricity they produce, were the common thread throughout the conference that had about 220 attendees.
The tariffs will allow Gainesville Regional Utilities to buy 100 percent of the solar energy produced by houses and businesses.
Gainesville will be the first city in the United States to have a feed-in tariff.
Thursday will be the second reading of the feed-in tariff bill at the Gainesville City Commission. If it is passed on Thursday, it will become law.
"We expect it to hit the streets by March 1," said John Crider, a GRU utilities analyst.
Crider said it is more of a policy change than a new law.
"We've always paid people for their solar energy," he said. "But we were only able to buy what energy that had left over after using it to power their home or business."
With the feed-in tariff, GRU will buy all of the solar energy produced at $0.32 a kilowatt-hour and sell the energy back to the private vendor for $0.12 a kilowatt-hour.
This way, everyone with solar panels will be paid to power their houses or businesses.
Crider said there are currently 60 houses and businesses in Gainesville with solar panels, but he expects that number to drastically increase with the new feed-in tariff.
"We have been getting calls every day from people who are showing a lot of interest in installing solar panels," he said.
In Europe, 20 out of 27 countries have entered into feed-in tariffs that have all been successful, said Adel El Gammal, secretary-general of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association.
Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan was invited by the conference to be the keynote speaker on behalf of Gainesville's renewable energy success.
Gainesville, Florida's fourth largest city, with 130,000 residents, is also one of the states greenest cities, Hanrahan said.
She said that Gainesville has done many things to contribute to make the city more environmentally sound like planting more trees and installing more efficient street lights.
Hanrahan said that Gainesville is a city with underlying poverty and disparity, and the feed-in tariff will create more jobs for construction workers and electricians.
The city is also hoping to create a biomass plant, Hanrahan said.
The plant will create energy by burning organic waste like tree thinning waste, urban waste and parts of vegetables and fruits that are not used for consumption, Crider said. He said it is under negotiation now and if it is built, it will not be finished until 2013.
Mike Antheil, executive director of the Florida Alliance for Renewable Energy, said Florida's status as the Sunshine State makes it the rightful leader of renewable energy in the U.S.
"Our decision makers and policy makers need to take advantage of that to allow Florida to create the roadway for the rest of the nation," Antheil said.
