Last May, Florida enacted a law deleting any reference to climate change from most of its state policies, a move Republican Governor Ron DeSantis described as “restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”
That hasn’t stopped the Sunshine State from becoming a national leader in solar power.
In a first, Florida vaulted past California last year in terms of new utility-scale solar capacity plugged into its grid. It built 3 gigawatts of large-scale solar in 2024, making it second only to Texas. And in the residential solar sector, Florida continued its longtime leadership streak. The state has ranked number two behind California for the most rooftop panels installed each year from 2019 through 2024, according to data the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie shared with Canary Media.
“We do expect Florida to continue as number two in 2025,” said Zoë Gaston, Wood Mackenzie’s principal U.S. distributed solar analyst.
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