Whether it’s fair or not, when local environmentalists talk about who’s greener, Tampa often comes up short in comparison with its neighbors. St. Petersburg, for instance, was named the state’s first “green city” in 2007 by the Florida Green Building Coalition, who cited its preservation of open spaces, water conservation programs and more.
The comparison even rears its competitive head when Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio is in the room. Last month, during a meeting she convened with an energy conservation task force, a member mentioned that St. Pete was building a LEED-certified fire station. That prompted Mayor Iorio to harrumph a bit: Tampa’s new fire station would be LEED-certified, too, she pointed out, as would all future city buildings of over 5,000 square feet (LEED-certified is an accreditation given by the U.S. Green Building Council, and stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).
Later, at an April 1 City Council meeting, a discussion with city Administrator of Public Works Steve Dagnault left some doubt as to whether the city would go for the Gold LEED certification or save money and settle for a Silver.
But these comparisons are minor considerations when it comes to what some consider Tampa’s biggest hurdle in going greener: the Tampa Electric Company, or TECO.
Mayor Iorio’s energy conservation task force owes its existence to a bitter dispute over TECO. In 2008, as the city was negotiating a new 25-year franchise agreement with the utility, activists excoriated what they viewed as an over-reliance on coal and natural gas, when there had been a surge in the country to support biofuels, wind and solar energy. Some citizens even suggested that Tampa go the route of dozens of other cities in Florida (such as Lakeland and Jacksonville) and run its own power company.
But that never happened. Instead, the mayor created the task force in early 2009, an 18-member group made up mostly of business officials plus a few members of the community, to work with the utility on energy conservation, renewable energy and climate change initiatives.
The group’s first set of recommendations seemed benign enough – hardly anything to alarm TECO shareholders. They included nine “actions to be pursued,” including a marketing strategy to encourage more landlords and property owners to make energy-efficient improvements using TECO and city monies, and new financing options for property owners to encourage energy efficient upgrades.
Tampa City Councilwoman Linda Saul-Sena was unhappy when a majority of her colleagues went along with the Iorio administration and re-upped for the 25-year TECO deal, and she was further nonplussed upon reviewing the recommendations, calling them “very modest.”
“I wished that it would have been more time-specific, more accountable in terms of how many customers impacted, and the savings we hoped to achieve,” she said recently.
But now TECO doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to act on those.
During the task force meeting last month, Mayor Iorio displayed some impatience at the utility’s slow pace.
“Can we get TECO to present a formal response?” she asked with a slight edge in her voice as she stared at the list of recommendations, as yet not acted upon. After being informed that she would get something in writing, she glanced toward Thom Snelling, the city’s Deputy Director for Growth Management and Development Service but better known as the city’s “green officer.”
“I think we need to close the full loop from TECO,” she said. “I think we need to have commentary from the utility.”
Weeks later, TECO has yet to make that formal response, though a spokesman says it will be coming shortly.
Despite its failure so far to respond to the task force, on March 31 the company did file for approval from the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) to expand its number of energy-efficient programs for customers, including customer rebates of up to $1,000 for installation of new solar hot water heating systems, and provision of solar water heating systems for new buildings housing nonprofit groups. The company also announced a series of features and enhancements for residential and business customers.
Task force member Ed Turanchik is outspoken in praising TECO for those recent rate filings, calling them “impressive improvements.”
But Phil Compton of the Sierra Club is not impressed. He says that the utility has never really shown any commitment to generating energy through alternative sources, and he was likewise unimpressed by the recommendations produced by the task force. But he takes some comfort that TECO may have to change its reliance on coal, now that the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a new regulation that critics say could mean the end for surface mining, or “mountain top removal.” The energy company has used that controversial procedure to mine coal in Kentucky for over a decade now.
If there’s dispute over TECO’s dedication to energy efficiency, there’s consensus at least one issue: The company needs to do a better job of communicating and marketing to let residents know how to save energy.
But community activist Dena Leavengood said at the task force meeting that TECO “has a limited budget, and has their own agenda in how they want to market and present things.”
Another non-business official citizen on the panel was Maggie Wilson, a Tampa Palms resident who manages daily operations at the Tampa Palms Community Development District office. She calls the list of recommendations a good start, but says one thing ought to be clear: TECO is an investor-owned company and “has a responsibility to its investors before their responsibility to the community.” She added that “the reality is taking a nickel away from the investors to help the community may not be something readily they can do.” She said almost wistfully that whenever the task force would look at utility companies owned by municipalities, those companies had the ability to do things “very much different” than private entities like TECO.
Maybe it’s a matter of size. Some suggest that the reason Sarasota and St. Pete have an easier time making progress in energy efficiency is that they work with two of the biggest public utilities in the state, Progress Energy (3 million customers) and Florida Power & Light (4.5 million). TECO’s customers number approximately 670,000.
Susan Glickman is a lobbyist with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. She says that when it comes to what is feasible with power companies, size does matter. She also says that local municipalities in some cases are doing all they can to be more energy-efficient, but there is an inherent tension because of the way utilities like TECO are regulated in Florida. “They [utilities] make money by building power plants, ” she says. Two years ago, the Legislature allowed FP&L and Progress to charge customers for the construction of nuclear power plants. But renewable energy plants? Glickman says FP&L will develop big solar projects as soon as they figure out how to pass the costs to the customer. For environmentalists like Glickman, the real challenge is getting anything to happen in the state Legislature. Last year the Senate approved legislation that would require publicly regulated power companies in the state to produce another 20 percent of their electricity from renewable and clean energy sources. Unfortunately, the House hasn’t looked at the bill at all this year, nearly two thirds of the way through the regular spring session.
One legislative hope that is gaining some traction is PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy), a program through which local governments would use their bonding capacity to lend money to residential and commercial property owners to finance more efficient, clean-energy retrofits and wind-resistant improvements.
“What Tampa Electric and all the other utilities need is certainty in the market for long-range planning,” says Susan Glickman. And that includes possibly a cap and trade policy, or a tax on carbon, that’s all dependent on Congress passing an energy bill this year.
But back to those comparisons: What exactly is St. Pete doing to get all that nice green press?
St. Pete City Councilman Karl Nurse says his city has been able to do some significant work just by trying to go green in city offices and buildings. “We’ve approached it from a financial viewpoint,” he says. “We did energy audits from all the buildings, then we looked at traffic lights, then we went to parking garages, because they have lights on 24/7.”
Nurse also says the way to sell the community on energy efficiencies is by staying away from hot-button terms like “climate change,” and instead focusing on things that everybody can get behind — saving money and adding jobs.
Tampa City Council members Mary Mulhern and Linda Saul-Sena both mentioned Nurse in criticizing what they say is a comparative lack of initiative in Tampa’s City Hall.
But Tampa is getting things done. Thom Snelling says that stimulus money has allowed the city to put out bids for a carbon footprint study of all city-owned operations that would identify areas for energy-efficient cost savings, with the results due in 4 to 6 months.
He also notes that the city has won its own kudos from the Florida Green Building Coalition; it’s been classified as a Gold-level certified Green Local government.
But for Tim Frendo, a consultant who co-authored Tampa’s Green Business Designation plan, it’s not just the locals Tampa should be concerned with. He acknowledges that St. Petersburg has been an environmental leader, but he wants to see Tampa compete not just with St. Pete, Sarasota and Lakeland, but with Atlanta, Boston and Chicago, and sees light and high-speed rail making the city more competitive.
Tampa City Councilman John Dingfelder says the issue is outreach. “Over the years [the city has] been using better types of air conditioning and heating equipment, more efficient equipment in building roofing to higher standards, that’s good and laudable,” he says, “but the problem is very quiet … we’re not doing enough outreach to the community.”
Task force member C.J. Reynolds says it’s critical to make the public hungry for changes as well. “You have to have a continued engagement to hold them accountable if the citizens themselves will say, “I want more money for rebates.”
But will TECO respond in kind? Spokesman Rick Morera says that the utility’s recent filings with the PSC are a response to requests from the state agency to promote energy conservation. But with a legislature not compelled to put more energy-efficient controls at the highest level, and with 24 years left to run on the current franchise agreement, Tampa environmentalists may still be clinging to what might have been in the fall of 2008.
This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2010.
