Tell your state leaders to exempt solar farms from permitting review and preempt local restrictions!

Florida built over 3 GW of new utility-scale solar power plugged into the grid in 2024, the second most of any U.S. state — overtaking California and behind only Texas. Florida is also second only to California in deployment of residential (e.g. rooftop) solar!

This definitely wasn’t because of any decarbonization effort from the state government, as Florida also recently passed a law deleting even the words “climate change” from state policies. However, Florida’s preexisting “abundance-style” building laws, which both exempted solar farms under 75 MW from the state-level permitting process and prevented local-level red tape from restricting solar farms, allowed the market to build more and spurring a solar boom across the Sunshine State!

“We’re seeing this wave of project installations at gigawatt scales, but if you look at what’s actually being built, it’s a small 74-megawatt [project] here or a 74.9-megawatt project there…

It’s just easier to permit in the state, and developers have realized that they can keep installations at this range and they don’t need to go through the longer process.”

— Sylvia Leyva Martinez, solar analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

There’s a long-established stereotype that solar power is an “alternative” energy source, a finicky and expensive option that requires paying a “green premium.” A lot of that was true up until the early 2020s. But in 2025, solar power is a mature technology, grid-scale batteries have essentially solved the intermittence problem, and solar-plus-batteries is the world’s cheapest energy source and the provider of the lion’s share of all new power capacity built on Earth for the last several years. It doesn’t need government help anymore as much as it needs government to get out of the way.

Zero-cost deregulatory measures have become one of the most effective ways that jurisdictions can accelerate the clean energy revolution! In a time of fast-rising electricity prices, making it easier to bring more clean electrons onto the grid is a slam-dunk win-win policy option. State leaders across America should pass legislation to exempt solar and projects from permitting reviews and preempt any local attempts to restrict them.

Tell your state leaders to exempt solar farms from permitting review and preempt local restrictions!