This is the quarterly newsletter from the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, highlighting its progress, and the counties and municipalities in Southeast Florida.

Figure: A map of projects in the FY25-26 Statewide Resilience Plan, Courtesy of Florida DEP

Across the Region

Voluntary programs and benchmarking ordinances serve as a first step in curbing the estimated 30% of building energy waste. Municipal and county staff gathered on November 18, 2024 to learn from subject matter experts and one another about designing and implementing a benchmarking program. Designed to facilitate cross-pollination of learnings and best practices from existing benchmarking programs across the region, as well as share external examples, speakers at the workshop included representatives from the Institute for Market Transformation, Miami-Dade County Office of Resilience, City of Miami Building Department, City Boston Environment Department, and Cadmus.

Key Takeaways 

• Buildings that consistently benchmark save 5-10% on energy.
• Building stock analyses are essential to tailoring a program to a county or municipality’s context, and ultimately encouraging widespread compliance. 
• Intergovernmental coordination and partnership with local non-profit organizations can relieve capacity constraints on implementation and compliance. 
• In lieu of Building Performance Standards, re-tuning offers a pathway for low-performing buildings to improve their ratings. 

Speaker presentations are available for download. A summary document capturing the shared learnings will be available in early February. 

As a result of energetic discussions, the group will continue to meet to solidify the areas where there is interest in advancing coordinated work on benchmarking, and to map out a process to advance those initiatives.

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Broward and Miami-Dade counties continue critical momentum to advance port decarbonization and improve the efficiency of operations, securing more than $78 million in U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) grants in recent months. Port Everglades Regional Port Operations with Emissions Reductions Project was granted over $53 million through the USDOT’s Port Infrastructure Development program, a discretionary award, which received $450 million in appropriations from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in FY2024. The grant will support a Port and Maritime Electrification Plan; electrical system upgrades and associated civil works required for charging stations; the purchase of various types of lower-emission, hybrid, and electric equipment; and a workforce development program.

The Miccosukee and the Seminole Tribes of Florida have secured more than $15.2 million in funding to support the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Climate Pollution Reduction (CRPG) Implementation grant, made possible through the Biden Administration's Inflation Reduction Act. Both Tribal Nations worked in partnership with the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact to develop the Southeast Florida Priority Climate Action Plan, which included greenhouse gas reduction measures from across county, Tribal, and municipal governments in the region. Based on the measures included in this plan, the Miccosukee and Seminole Tribes applied for implementation funding through the EPA’s CPRG Tribes and Territories Competition, a competitive award. 

Sixteen years ago, Broward County demonstrated early leadership in its journey toward reducing community-wide emissions across the county, by passing a resolution that established a community-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target of 80% below 2007 emissions by 2050. In 2021, the County Commission went further, recognizing the need to take a firm position on carbon neutrality and passed a resolution to reduce GHG emissions to net zero by 2050 by participating in the Race to Zero commitment.

To support the County’s advancement toward this ambitious goal, the Resilient Environment Department has begun the development of the County-wide Net Zero Plan, guided by a consultant team led by EXP. This initiative will include comprehensive outreach and data collection to create a tailored plan to meet the carbon neutrality goal, increase renewable energy use, and advance equitable implementation and community engagement, while prioritizing cost-effectiveness. Outcomes will include the development of model pathways by sector, prioritized investments for projects, proposed partnership models and incentive programs. Broward has also designed its contract so individual municipalities can opt to “piggyback” onto the County’s efforts. By utilizing the same framework, Broward municipalities can develop customized decarbonization plans, enabling local efforts to align with the broader County-wide strategy.

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According to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, the national charging network has doubled since 2020, with 204,000 publicly available chargers available in 2024. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Discretionary Award has been a significant grant to support the rapid scaling of EV infrastructure. Recently, Miami-Dade County and the Seminole Tribe of Florida have won nearly $4.8 million and ~$1 million, respectively, through the CFI grant, the first recipients in Florida. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $2.5 billion over five years for this program to strategically deploy electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and other alternative fueling infrastructure projects in urban and rural communities in publicly accessible locations. The State of Florida ranks second in the nation for EV registrations, and Miami-Dade County has the highest rate of EV adoption in the state. Advancing the adoption of EVs is a critical strategy to support Miami-Dade’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050. 

As a result of the award, Miami-Dade will install 390 charging ports at 73 community facilities, including libraries, parks, transit hubs, cultural arts facilities, community resource centers, public safety facilities, and college campuses. More than 66% of the total charging stations installed will be in low- to moderate- income neighborhoods and almost all stations will be located within one mile of these communities. A portion of the chargers installed at transit sites will be dedicated specifically to electric car-share services that provide first- and last-mile connections to transit. Increasing access to transit options results in wider access to a broader array of jobs and services throughout the region. 

Grant funds will also be used to purchase four solar charging units to be located at Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue locations for use following a disaster. The solar charging units include battery storage allowing their use during power outages. The county is partnering with the City of Miami Gardens to add some of the first chargers at city facilities. In addition, the project will add chargers at all eight campuses of Miami Dade College to serve the diverse student population.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program is a $550 million grant program funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The majority of the funding is via a formula award designed to assist states, local governments, and Tribes in implementing strategies to reduce energy use, reduce fossil fuel emissions, and improve energy efficiency. Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, and many of the region’s cities are eligible for the award. To be eligible, counties must be one of the 10 most populous counties within their state or that have a population of more than 200,000. Palm Beach County is applying its allocation of $652,450 toward purchasing electric buses and charging infrastructure for public transportation. Palm Tran’s public transportation fleet consists of 32 routes that serve the county’s 39 municipalities and unincorporated areas. Miami-Dade County is allocated $1,134,700, which they will use to solarize 44 low-to-moderate income family homes, in partnership with Solar United Neighbors. Each household will receive a 5kW solar system at no cost and will see immediate cost savings on monthly electric bills.

Photo: Palm Beach County resident at a tree giveaway event. Photo courtesy of CommunityGreening.org 

Through a $1 million Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Government-to-Government award, Palm Beach County’s Office of Resilience and Parks and Recreation Department are partnering with the non-profit organization Community Greening to implement the Resilient Glades Tree Campaign. The campaign will advance the re-greening of the Glades region, including the South Bay, Belle Glade, Pahokee, and Canal Point communities. The Resilient Glades Tree Campaign will plant trees at six county parks, give away 2,000 trees, pilot a small urban food orchard, and support youth workforce development. The first tree giveaway event was hosted in November in Belle Glade, where 200 native and fruit trees were distributed to the community, including avocado, mango, marlberry, and paradise trees. This project aims to improve air quality, increase shade and cooling, absorb stormwater, mitigate climate change, and boost access to fresh produce in the Glades region.

Updates

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In the coming months, residents in Florida will be eligible to benefit from three programs funded via the Inflation Reduction Act, which will help lower their energy bills, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create jobs. The State of Florida’s Whole Home Rebates (HOMES), Florida’s Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates (HEAR), and the federal Florida Solar for All programs focus on advancing energy efficiency, home electrification, and rooftop solar among low- and moderate-income households. Local governments will be key partners in ensuring that households in the southeast Florida region are able to take full advantage and benefit from the programs. As such, the Compact has developed a briefing document providing an overview of these programs so as to ensure that all relevant departments within local governments have the information they need to help support resident education and program implementation.

The Compact has begun work on the second phase of its planning grant from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, which will result in the development of the Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (CCAP) by December 1, 2025. The CCAP will include all significant GHG sources/sinks across all economic sectors and will provide comprehensive strategies and emission reduction measures to achieve science-based emission reduction goals. Building off of the work of the March 2024 Priority Climate Action Plan, the Compact, in partnership with its consultant WSP, hosted over 10 virtual workshops to identify and capture a comprehensive list of policies and actions agencies and partners plan to achieve to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The November workshops collected initiatives with short-term (2030) and long-term (2050) implementation timeframes and covered a wide range of sectors such as solid waste, energy, agriculture, and transportation. The emission reductions and other benefits of these initiatives will be quantified and included in the CCAP. Additionally, the CCAP will identify relevant funding opportunities to support implementation. To gather vital input, in the coming weeks, municipal governments will receive a questionnaire regarding mitigation measures within their jurisdictions. The Compact will continue to engage municipalities and the private sector in order to develop a comprehensive and ambitious regional plan to reduce GHG emissions. 

Last summer, the Compact invited the 111 local and tribal governments across the region to participate in a voluntary CCAT survey. Now in its fourth year, the CCAT helps identify, track and report on 11 priority mitigation and adaptation strategies over time across the region. The survey was open from mid-May to the end of August.

A total of 27 (23%) of the local and tribal governments in the region responded to the survey, as compared to 29 (25%) last year, the third year the survey was administered resulting in a 7% decrease in participation. The survey results have been aggregated with data available at the regional scale, as well as by county and individual government responses. You can find the full set of data available on the Compact’s website.

Events

The Compact wrapped up another successful Climate Leadership Summit in December 2024 in Key West with nearly 400 people in attendance and has already begun planning the 17th Annual Climate Leadership Summit, December 16th & 17th, 2025, to be hosted at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Stay tuned for updates!