Florida state government will no longer be required to consider climate change when making energy policy under legislation signed Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSandis, a Republican.
The new law, passed by the Florida Legislature in March and set to take effect July 1, would also ban the construction of offshore wind turbines in state waters and eliminate state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewables .
The legislation also deletes requirements that government agencies use climate-friendly products and buy fuel-efficient vehicles. And it prevents any municipality from limiting the type of fuel that can be used in an appliance, such as a gas stove.
The legislation, along with two other bills signed by Mr. DeSantis on Wednesday, “will keep windmills off our beaches, natural gas in our reservoirs, and China out of our state.” wrote the governor on social media platform X. “We are restoring logic to our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of radical green zealots.”
Florida is one of the states most vulnerable to the costly and deadly effects of climate change, which is driven in large part by the burning of oil, natural gas and coal. Many scientific studies have shown that the increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has contributed to rising sea levels and more flooding in the state’s coastal cities.
Last year was Florida’s hottest since 1895, and waters off the coast warmed to 90 degrees during the summer, bleaching coral and burning marine life. Hurricane Idalia made landfall on August 30 near Keaton Beach and caused an estimated $3.6 billion in damage. Last year, Hurricane Ian was blamed for more than 140 deaths and $109.5 billion in damage in Florida, making it the costliest hurricane in the state’s history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Faced with mounting losses from flooding and increasingly extreme weather, major insurance companies are pulling out of the state. Florida homeowners struggle to find coverage, and when they do, they pay some of the highest premiums in the country. Thousands have enrolled in the state’s high-risk insurance pool of last resort, a fund that Mr. DeSantis said was “insolvent.” Volatility in the insurance market threatens Florida real estate and by extension the state’s economy, experts say.
The governor has supported programs to make communities more resilient to extreme weather events.
But Mr. DeSantis, who suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in January, has attacked climate policies as part of a push into the broader partisan culture wars. In a presidential debate last fall, Mr. DeSantis promised that “on Day 1, I’m taking all the Biden regulations, the Green New Deal, tearing it up and throwing it in the trash where it belongs.”
Mr. Biden’s climate regulations are not the Green New Deal, a sweeping legislative package pushed by progressives that has not passed Congress.
Last year, Mr. DeSantis rejected $346 million in federal funds available to help Floridians make their homes more energy efficient, despite a request by the State Legislature that Florida accept the money.
Florida is largely powered by natural gas, which provided about 74 percent of the state’s total net electricity generation in 2022. Nuclear provided about 12 percent, and solar and coal provided the rest, according to with the US Energy Information Administration. Florida has no offshore wind industry.
Brooke Alexander-Goss, the director of clean energy organizing for the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, said Mr. DeSantis had “failed” his constituents by signing the bill.
“Allowing this bill to become law puts the health and safety of all Floridians at risk, further demonstrating that his first priority is to appease big corporations and fossil fuel companies,” he said. “We will pay more at the pump and for our insurance premiums, and we will certainly see increases in climate-related disasters and deaths.”
Michael B. Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said delisting climate change as a priority is largely a symbolic action that does not bar lawmakers from considering climate change in state energy policy.
“If they had a different-minded governor in the future, the governor could say, ‘I want to look at climate change,'” Mr. Gerrard said. “It is not forbidden”.
But, he said, the symbolism could still have a political effect. “It’s a powerful signaling device that could have an effect on private sector actions, such as investment in clean energy efforts in the state and research at universities,” Mr. Gerrard said. “Students and faculty who care deeply about climate change are not going to be drawn to Florida, and climate research dollars could flow elsewhere.”