Last week, a poll from Trump-aligned pollster Fabrizio, Lee & Associates shocked the chattering class by finding 70% of Republican voters support American-made, utility-scale solar—supposedly anathema to today’s conservative energy policy.
Color me unsurprised. When I served as Miami’s Republican mayor, elected by Republican voters, solar energy and environmental solutions weren’t just policy priorities—they were popular.
We embraced solar as part of our city plan, and we also invested in other energy and environmental needs: raising seawalls, upgrading stormwater systems, attracting tech companies with zero-carbon nuclear power, and building flood-resistant infrastructure. Why? Because my Republican voters understood you can’t have a strong economy and thriving society without stewarding the natural assets that make your city valuable in the first place.
The truth is, energy and environmental policy is not as starkly divided as the culture warriors on either side want to admit. This polling and the city I governed for eight years is living proof.
Not to state the obvious, but people like living in beautiful places. People and businesses come to Miami for the sunshine, parks, clear water, and pristine beaches. But that beauty can come with a cost. Storm damage has become costlier, flooding more common, and residential insurance rates have been skyrocketing. After Hurricane Irma devastated South Florida in 2017, we faced a choice: continue treating environmental protection and energy resilience as optional, or recognize that our economy depends on both. We chose the latter.
Citizens voted to tax themselves $400 million to build resilience against storm surges and flooding. While this may seem costly, it’s significantly less than the $50 billion of destruction Irma caused statewide. And no price can be put on the lives we lost during the storm.
We broke ground on our first resiliency project in 2019, a flood mitigation upgrade in the low-lying Fair Isle neighborhood that raised roadways, improved drainage, and constructed a new stormwater pump station. The year before, we launched the PACE program—Property Assessed Clean Energy—enabling homeowners to finance rooftop solar, energy efficiency upgrades, and storm-resiliency improvements like impact windows and reinforced roofs through their property tax bills.
To date, the bond has funded dozens of flood-prevention projects while PACE has empowered thousands of homeowners to take control of their energy independence and hurricane preparedness. Both programs are voluntary—citizens voted for the bond, and homeowners choose PACE—and both demonstrate that conservative, market-driven environmental policy works.
Thankfully, Miami has not been directly hit by a hurricane since Irma. But it’s only a matter of time before the next storm strikes, and we’re better off for getting ahead. Our proactive approach means we’re saving money at the household level, protecting natural assets, and genuinely prepared when storms do come. The west coast of Florida wasn’t as fortunate—their recent hurricanes spiked insurance costs and pushed down property values, exactly the outcome our investments were designed to prevent.
That contrast illustrates why Miami’s approach to environment and energy can and should be replicated in cities across America. Every corner of our country has natural assets that create value while also presenting risks: towering mountains with avalanches, river deltas that flood, or forests prone to wildfires. Preserving those assets isn’t a wasteful line item—it’s what gives our communities value in the first place.
Of course, this dual commitment to environmental protection and energy innovation isn’t always easy. The same ocean that makes Miami beautiful reminds us of our vulnerability. The same prosperity that makes environmental investments possible has also made Miami a magnet, driving up housing costs and straining infrastructure.
Yet these are good–and solvable–problems to have. Miami is booming in large part because it is beautiful and because we embrace pragmatic environmental reforms that mitigate the risks of natural disasters. And the best way to respond to these growing pains is through tried and true Republican principles: keeping taxes low, reducing government debt, investing in infrastructure, and committing to law and order.
These policies helped Miami transition in a time of unprecedented growth, while turning a $115 million deficit into a $200 million surplus, cutting murders by 40%, and attracting businesses from Citadel to Spotify. The infrastructure improvements that protect us from floods—raised seawalls, upgraded drainage, enhanced green spaces—also make commutes easier and communities stronger. Economic vitality and environmental stewardship weren’t mutually exclusive. They were complementary priorities.
Of course, truly mitigating environmental dangers and building a robust energy future will require federal, state, and private sector actions to address root causes, ideally through market signals that mobilize the whole of the American economy to drive innovation and reduce emissions. But cities still play a key role because cities don’t have the option to play politics or get dragged down in culture wars.
I’ve long believed America’s mayors are part of the solutions party, because we either fix problems or we fail. Miami’s journey demonstrates that cities can thrive by embracing both economic growth and environmental responsibility. By choosing pragmatism over ideology—treating our environment as a strategic asset and investing in resilient infrastructure—we created a safe, booming, and beautiful city all at the same time.
Francis Suarez was the 43rd Mayor of Miami (2017-2025) and the former President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
You cannot support solar AND the environment.
It takes very little research to show that solar drives up electricity costs which hurt everybody. It causes massive strip mining for rare earths, but not in YOUR state so its OK? It requires massive amounts of coal mining to purify the silicon, and massive amounts of emissions which, by some calculations, exceed the amount of CO2 the solar panels mitigate. But those mines and those emissions are not in YOUR state so its OK?
Its easy to be for something when all the negative effects land somewhere you can turn a blind eye to.
I remember when Florida was debating a solar mandate. The CEO of a utility explained why solar was a bad idea. After the mandate was passed, he said positive things about solar.
As a matter of disclosure I have a lot of stock in that company. Making electricity is a public service. If the public wants solar, then the task is making it for the customers at the lowest cost while investors get a fair return.
The Public, including Florida Republicans do not understand the implications of industrial solar, otherwise, they would not be in favor, but against.
The implementation of industrial solar always involves higher electricity prices and puts the electrical grid at risk of blackouts and REQUIRES taxpayer subsidies, otherwise they are not economically viable on their own. They could not function without getting taxpayer money and special privileges when it comes to who gets to sell their electricity first. Solar gets put at the front of the line by activists.
If Republicans in Florida had that explained to them, would they be in favor of this? I don’t think so, unless they are very stupid.
As for rooftop solar, more power to them, as long as taxpayers don’t have to pay for it.
How do those industrial solar facilities hold up when a hurricane comes through? Answer: They don’t.
Suarez must be getting political contributions from Industrial Solar.
without subsidies and tax breaks?
There are few situations where solar makes economic sense.
A. For consumers where the cost of grid connection is more than buying solar panels, batteries and diesel generator. It also depends on the solar resource because it might be lower cost to just truck in diesel.
B. Where there is plenty of hydropower capacity but scarcity of perched water. Solar can conserve perched water and the intermittency is easily managed by demand following using hydro.
There are no situations where solar makes economic sense. It is intermittent so requires backup at all times. In addition to nighttime, there is no solar power during the regular afternoon rainstorms typical of Florida. Because of backup, including batteries and central power backup, it is fundamentally very expensive so requires government support at all times and the cost of such backup is shielded from ratepayers by taxpayers. Yes, Florida has achieved economic success in recent years but it is not due to solar power, it is in spite of it. Surely you know this Mr. Suarez, so why are you pitching such nonsense?
“Not due to solar”
That’s exactly right.
Suarez sounds like a professional promoter of Industrial Solar. Next thing we know, he’ll be working for them.
Situation B might make sense somewhere.
Where I am, solar generation occurs in the same low demand season where dams are forced to spill excess freshet water. Export prices go near zero.
During the high demand winter season when reservoirs are drawn down solar panels produce less than 10% of summer output. Even 2-5%.
Basically useless.
A solar plus nuclear plus electric energy storage would make some sense. Nuclear would provide 24hr/day baseload, solar would help with daytime demand being higher than late night demand and electric energy storage would sized to provide evening demand that’s above the baseload provided by nuclear as well as the fluctuations in solar output during the day. Going solar plus electric energy storage without nuclear would require vastly larger energy storage facilities.
Well all that makes perfect sense if there is cost effective storage at scale. But there is not.
So your solution is built upon a false premise.
No, it makes no sense at all to duplicate something that is reliable with something that is unreliable.
but… but… it’ll make them feel virtuous! saving the planet! /s
The number 1 issue with 100% nuclear generation is limited load following capability due to135Xe – and a 24 hour cycle brings out the worst with Xenon poisoning. The advantage of a solar + nuclear combination is that having solar generation will reduce the amount of load following with nuclear generation.
One way to minimize load following with nuclear is to have enough energy storage to allow the nuclear plant to operate at a constant output over a 24 hour day. Having solar would reduce the amount of storage needed. A predominantly solar generation mix would require vastly larger amounts of energy storage.
Capturing the exothermic heat from nuclear reaction and storing it in molten salt for later steam raising is the only cost-effective load balancing future.
It sounds like the engineers who designed the plant were unaware of Xenon buildup. However, they are aware and designed for it.
In a nuclear plant, power follows steam demand.
The rods control primary temperature, and thus steam pressure.
Xenon buildup reduces the output temp of the water (by decreasing reactor power, so rods are pulled to maintain a stable temp. When Xenon decays, temp rises, so rods are inserted to lower the primary temp.
If load demand changes, up or down, steam supply to the turbines is regulated to control power output. Accordingly, primary water temp will increase or decrease. Control rods are raised or lowered to maintain primary temp.
The control rods are not something that are pulled to the top and left that way, they will have varying heights based on the current profile.
The cooling towers are required for condensing the steam for return to the steam generators. You could try to recover the waste heat, but I don’t believe it will be significant enough to melt a large mass of salt.
Edit.
Xenon builds to some steady-state level based on the current reactor power.
No one is proposing a 100% nuclear generation, you are solving a problem that you made up. All utilities use a mix of sources, some of which have better load following capabilities than others.
Your solution is to add solar, which has no load following capabilities at all. Storage is just a hand wave to disguise that problem. Its a poor disguise because cost effective utility scale storage does not exist.
Taxpayer supported Industrial Solar makes no sense.
It makes no sense to promote a technology that cannot function unless it gets taxpayer money.
If “battery storage” is chanted enough times, the Perpetual Motion Fairy is summoned and the Magic Money Tree grows and bears fruit.
Solar output is high at the wrong time of day and is declining rapidly during the evening load peak. Useless. Not to mention weather variability.
I remember a PG&E engineer pointing out the problem with peak demand occurring during early evening hours – in 1976. A 100% nuclear generation mix would also require substantial energy storage as most thermal reactor designs would not handle load following.
No one is proposing a 100% nuclear generation, you are solving a problem that you made up. All utilities use a mix of sources, some of which have better load following capabilities than others.
Your solution is to add solar, which has no load following capabilities at all. Storage is just a hand wave to disguise that problem. Its a poor disguise because cost effective utility scale storage does not exist.
Well said, but you forgot to mention the enormous damage these panels cause to nature. There are thousands upon thousands of square kilometers covered with this junk worldwide, disrupting wildlife which can not roam freely as it used to, and covering the ground so less grass can grow, which means less insects, less predators feeding on insects, less…..I am sure you get the gist. And the sad fact is, that it is, oh so, unnecessary! CO2 is irrelevant when it comes to temperature of the planet.
Yes, it is all unnecessary.
Unreliables like Industrial Solar and Windmills are a cancer on electrical grids and consumers.
bingo!
Public opinion polls are notoriously bad
One poll had 87% of republicans in favor of “banning the pollution causing global warming”
far too easy to manipulate the wording of the question.
When it comes to the environment, there is the good, bad, and the ugly of solar .
First the ity bity tiny winy good. I use small solar panels to maintain the lead acid batteries on my sail boat. Since I have been doing that my batteries have lasted longer reducing the environmental cost of batteries.
The ugly is slave labor solar panels made in China.
The bad is making electricity with solar that would have otherwise been made with coal.
Solar is a bad way to make electricity. Sure a utility scale solar in the desert south west than on a roof. Dumb and Dumber!
Because of regulations, the power industry must make electricity safely with insignificant environmental impact. I would say that the solar is also safe but not safer. If the solar panels were made in the US following our regulation that would be okay but not better than coal.
Solar is pretty much the only way to make energy. Apart from nuclear power all other power sources are derived from the sun. So the choice is either to grow plants, bury them and wait for several hundred millions years for them to turn into fossil fuel or use a solar panel to get electricity today with efficiencies orders of magnitude greater than the natural approach.
Yeah for four hours a day at best with lower production at higher latitudes and in Winter. Problem is we need to use electricity 24 hours a day and Solar CAN’T DO THAT solar is only productive when Nature decides to deliver the fuel. And Solar isn’t very resilient to inclement weather. If production is low you simply can’t shine more sunlight on the panels. Nor could you add or remove wind when it’s outside the goldilocks zone.
And neither Wind nor Solar will have the life expectancy of a Gas or Coal Generation Plant or Nuclear Power Plant but will use more than 3 times the concrete over the lifespan of the Nuclear Plant.
Fortunately for us, nature grew the plants and buried them millions of years ago.
Now all we have to do is extract the riches nature has prepared for us.
Since there are at a minimum, centuries of fossil fuels remaining in the earth, we have plenty of time to figure out what we will use when the fossil fuels start getting scarce.
If the efficiencies were an order of magnitude greater, there would be solar panels everywhere without any subsidies.
Doesn’t it suck when one single sentence destroys your one paragraph false premise?
Why worry about producing new coal when there’s enough in the ground for centuries.
Izaak
You have to understand second order differential equations to know why solar does not work on a large scale. Looking at the assumptions made 30 years ago, solar panels and nuclear power plants were assumed to last 25 years.
I calculated how long it would take to build solar equivalent to my last new nuke I worked at in China based on a utility scaled solar in the desert southwest.
85 years!
The solar die off factor is greater than the new build factor.
My high paying job starting up new reactors would last 2 years but in 10 years we had built all the new reactors we needed in the US. Those reactors will operate 80 years at a 15% higher capacity factor than the original assumption.
I like solar in the form of waste biomass to run steam plants. Many are still around that were built in the 70s where lumber is produced. This is an example of where a power plant solves and environmental problem.
Come on Izaak, we know you’re not that dumb.
Just shows you how deluded most people are about solar.
The delusion is huge. People think adding more solar panels will reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. There is no other reason ever used to justify solar electricity in developed areas. It is completely inefficient.
Governments were so sure of this fallacy that they subsidized them with tax incentives. Those early adopters have now reached the end of life of their systems and now must replace with no subsidies.
Hard to find a solar installer these days as bankruptcies limit options.
What is this man rattling on about?
Miami-Dade County generates a small (relatively) amount of electricity via solar. 67.3% is nuclear, 30.6% is gas. Of 20.91 TWh, solar provides 428.82 GWh, or about 2%.
Scroll down to the pie chart:
https://www.gridinfo.com/florida/miami-dade-county
Which means that the solar output is too small to seriously screw up the generation mix. As I mentioned in another post, solar can help with demand being higher in the day than at night, though that will require some battery storage. Having solar to provide most of the electric energy probably wouldn’t make economic sense.
Employing Industrial Solar to make any electricity doesn’t make sense because it requires subsidies from the taxpayer.
No taxpayer subsidies, no Industrial Solar. Industrial Solar cannot make money on its own.
Do rooftop solar panels provide some form of apotropaic protection against hurricanes⸮
Do the good folk of Miami get lower insurance premiums if they install solar panels on their roofs⸮
The article has a lot of sensible remarks about measures taken to improve Miami residents’ resilience but I fail to see how rooftop solar panels contribute to that.
I support Solar, it’s great for recharging batteries (Cell Phones, Laptops, Powerwalls, etc.) and running desk top calculators. And it’s perfect if you are living off the grid…any place Grid Power is inaccessible…and aren’t concerned with powering too much house too late into the evening. Solar is great for providing power to run pumps for pumped storage. Between 10am and 2pm.
.
What solar is not good for is providing energy on demand when the power is needed most (peak demand).
.
So Solar requires some form of additional costly storage in order to provide power on demand as nature refuses to provide fuel unless nature.wants to.
And in the case of solar, Nature delivers the fuel between 10am and 2pm
Not perfect, not great and very dangerous.
When I dry camp I am off grid I charge my lead acid batteries with my $88 harbor freight generator. When I need A/C I run my 6500 watt propane generator.
The failure modes and effects of LA batteries are well known as are the other risks of fire on a boat and RV. I mitigate the risk and have a plan to get away from the fire in less than a minute.
One of the effects of lithium batteries is immediate death.
Australia has made huge strides in transitioning to rooftop solar, household batteries and generally de-industrialising the economy. This video gives a clear insight into the real costs of idling big coal plants to load follow weather dependent generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74bE_lYvEZE&t=5s
The only point it misses is that grid scale wind and solar are already dead assets. The 950MW of solar farms in South Australia did not produce net revenue in Q4 2025. They are already stranded assets and the oldest is only 9 years in operation. Their demand has been taken by rooftops.
Try to run an aluminium smelter on rooftop solar and batteries!
There were 95 new coal fired power stations commissioned around the world in 20-25 and 23 retired. China alone added 52 new big power plants in 2025.
‘Australia has made huge strides in transitioning to rooftop solar, household batteries and generally de-industrialising the economy.’
I think ‘strides’ and ‘de-industrialising’ are somewhat at odds here.
Yep. 52 new coal units of 1GW or more and a further 291GW in the pipeline. 83GW started construction during the year. China loves coal.
In terms of utility grade solar the devil is in the details, or actually in the location. In places like Southern California where sunshine is abundant they can help, in the northern tier states much less so. Total reliance on solar with battery backup is absolutely insane, as are the wind turbines. Simply too expensive and unreliable. I have put solar on my roof but not to save the earth, such a preposterous idea, but to help combat the incredible mismanagement of Californias energy needs by Gavin Newsom and the democrat party. Under their management energy costs have soared, and the supply of reliable energy teetering on the brink. Soon more refineries will shut down due to the democratic parties heavy handed regulations, and while the rest of the country sees gasoline prices drop significantly with the new administration in DC (as did Californias’ though still the highest in the nation) the price will rise dramatically with the closure of these refineries.
And, if Tom Steyer gets elected, California will be driven into perpetual bankruptcy as Billionaires and Billionaire Businesses relocate out of state taking their wealth and tax base with them. Then he’ll destroy PG&E and So Cal Edison by breaking them up into municipalities that will have their individual customer bases destroyed with each fire and will therefore lose their ability to recover from such losses.
Something similar happened (monopoly break up) with Pac Bell. AT&T used to be the Long Distance calling Company and Pacific Bell was Local. AT&T complained about Monopolies and unfair business and Pacific Bell was forced to break up into Baby Bells. AT&T absorbed those Baby Bells one by one and now it’s all AT&T
It doesn’t matter where Industrial Solar is located, it is still not economically viable without taxpayer subsidies.
Industrial Solar cannot function without taxpayer subsidies and special pricing.
By all means put solar on your roof, as long as you pay for it, but ban network solar and wind outright.
“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you put solar panels on your roof, because we know what’s best for you, and the planet. You’re welcome.”
Remember, all politicians think they know how to live life better than you. It’s when they start forcing you to do it their way that I object.
Politicians earn my vote, they never deserve it. When they get all preachy I’m done with them.
“Of course, truly mitigating environmental dangers and building a robust energy future will require federal, state, and private sector actions to address root causes, ideally through market signals that mobilize the whole of the American economy to drive innovation and reduce emissions.”
“Robust” – I hate that word.
“Reduce emissions” – completely irrelevant to anything Miami cherishes.
Seawalls, drainage improvements, better structural resistance to damage – all good!
But PLEASE stop talking about “emissions” as though CO2 from power plants or industry or vehicles has anything perceptible to do with trends of temperature, storms, or any other climate variable.
Thank you for listening.
As long as a person knows what terms like mean higher high tide (MHHT) or even highest astronomical tide (HAT) means. I seem to recall that some of Miami’s flooding woes are the result of misjudged datums on civil engineering projects.
Will those Republicans continue to like solar if they have to pay the full cost? And once they understand that solar is unreliable? And that solar systems will wear out in maybe 20 years if lucky?
Anyone dumb enough to believe in Trump is sure dumb enough to believe in ‘solar power’
If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise….
“Anyone dumb enough to write ‘believe in Trump’ is sure dumb enough to believe in ‘solar power’
FIFY
Really? They claim to have “surveyed” 1000 people and on that they declare all Republicans support solar. Really? How about giving their names and numbers so it can be verified these 1000 people speak for the entirety of the Republican Party? Never mind, fact is 1000 people is not a large enough cohort to represent anything or anyone.
Solar and wind are failures, they do not, combined, produce enough electricity to support their own operation. FAILURE.
“Of course, truly mitigating environmental dangers”
What exactly are you mitigating, and how? You can’t mitigate the weather, you can adapt to it.
Some delusions persist across all boundaries. There is ONE place where solar and wind are not useless – a place where access to base power is impossible. Solar and wind REQUIRE base power and subsidy to exist.
This is a complete false flag article.No, conservatives aren’t against solar. We’re against stupid virtue signaling with it.
Once upon a time there was a happy family of electric service coops who belonged to a generation and transmission coop. Then some of these little coops fell in love with the idea of renewable energy. This led to unhappiness in the family because the big generating coop wouldn’t let them install as much solar energy locally as they wished.
Luckily an energy wholesaler came along to provide them money to pay liquidated damages to leave their happy family, a promise to sell them adequate supplies of energy, and the right to add as much solar energy locally as they wished.
The split involved Kit Carson Electric Company (KCEC) away from Tri-State. In order to pay the liquidated damages ($37 million) for contract termination, KCEC borrowed from the electric wholesaler and paid this back through higher and escalating whole rates that peaked at $80 per MWhr in 2022. Last I heard KCEC also had constructed or incorporated into their service footprint 39MW of solar.
Now KCEC is a small utility. It’s average load is only 19MW and there are around 20,000 service accounts. So they have already invested in solar to twice their average demand. However, New Mexico isn’t more sunny than other places so they appear to be oversupplied during part of the day, and must purchase power from the wholesaler through most of the day.
I have no idea how things have worked out for KCEC. The last rate sheets I can find online date from 2016. There was some glowing press about this being the wave of the future for REAs upgrading into a modern clean power system, but none that I see written after the 2022 end of higher rates to pay their loan on liquidated damages. I have no idea how KCEC manages its interface to the grid because the wholesaler provides no physical equipment support — they just resell power they get from elsewhere, including from coal-fired plants.
If anyone reading this is a member of KCEC and can tell me about how their hopes for lower power costs have worked out, I’d love to hear their perspective.
What a disappointing post. Here we have a guy rightfully bragging about taking common sense measures to protect against natural disasters primarily hurricanes but also the danger of building so much in such a vulnerable location. I am all for this. Anytime you build in a vulnerable location it not only makes sense to take precautions but you should be prosecuted if you don’t. The fact that they invested in reliable, dependable constant energy by way of nuclear is also wise and admirable. Dragging worthless, expensive, subsidized and likely mandated renewables into the equation is simply dishonest. What a disgrace.