Clean Energy Portfolio Modeling for Tampa Florida

Sierra Club
Project Complete

On behalf of the Sierra Club, Synapse developed and modeled a Clean Energy Portfolio for Tampa Electric Company (TECO) that met the City of Tampa’s goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. For our analysis, we modeled a Business as Usual (BAU) Scenario where TECO continues to rely on its current fossil resources and a clean energy scenario where TECO retires its remaining coal unit and reduces its dependence on energy from its existing gas plants by building out solar PV and battery storage and increasing investment in demand-side management. The clean energy scenario achieves a 50 percent renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for TECO by 2035. We also tested a more aggressive sensitivity that achieves an 80 percent RPS by 2035.

We found that transitioning to 50 percent renewables is the lowest-cost resource option for Tampa ratepayers relative to continued reliance on fossil resources. The 50% Clean Energy Scenario saved ratepayers between $400 million and $1.6 billion in net present value terms relative to TECO's current fossil plan, depending on the gas and carbon pricing forecasts. This Clean Energy Scenario will also reduce CO2 emissions by 60 percent by 2040 (compared to 2021 levels) and prevent approximately 50 million tons of CO2 from being emitted compared to the TECO BAU scenario. We also found that the Clean Energy Scenario generated more and higher quality local jobs than the BAU scenario.