FPL’s Six Ways to Save on Your Taxes and Help the Environment
April 11 – File your taxes online and save paper by using IRS e-file. FPL also offers online bill payment. Since the FPL E-Mail Bill® program began in 2001, customers have saved a total of 171,000 trees by avoiding unnecessary paper billing transactions. If you sign up for FPL’s E-Mail bill before the end of May, we’ll plant two new trees in your honor.
April 12 – Did you know that plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) can reduce overall carbon emissions by up to 70 percent and lower fuel costs by up to 80 percent? You can go electric, too, with a variety of tax credits ranging from $2,500 to $7,500, depending on the size of the battery in the car. As the first utility in the nation to put an industrial plug-in hybrid bucket truck into service, FPL’s goal is that 100 percent of all new company vehicles will be PEVs or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles by 2020.
April 13 – It’s getting warmer every day. Insulation can help you keep the heat out and the savings in by reducing how hard your A/C has to work to cool your home. Federal tax credits can cover 30 percent of the cost of qualified materials up to $1,500. Learn more at www.energystar.gov/taxcredits.
April 14 – Today in Sarasota, FPL is treating St. Martha’s Day Care, a nonprofit childcare organization, to an energy-efficiency makeover. Did you make qualified energy-efficiency improvements to your home in 2009? If you did, don’t forget to file IRS Form 5695 for qualified Residential Energy Credits.
April 15 – Your tax return is due today! Don’t despair – if you made qualified solar-powered improvements to your home in 2009, tap federal tax credits of up to 30 percent of the cost. FPL believes solar power is an important part of our energy future so we’re investing in the next generation with Solar Education Stations for schools. The newest opens today at J.D. Parker Elementary School in Stuart, near where FPL is building the world’s first solar hybrid power plant.
April 16 – Time to start thinking about your 2010 taxes! Check out Florida’s ENERGY STAR appliance rebate program, which starts today. State residents can receive a 20-percent rebate off a new ENERGY STAR-qualified appliance. You can also learn more about FPL rebates for a variety of residential and business energy efficiency upgrades at www.FPL.com.
For more information on FPL’s “Earth Day Is Every Day” campaign, the full list of tips and links to videos and other information, please visit www.FPL.com or www.twitter.com/insidefpl.
Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) is the largest electric utility in Florida and one of the largest rate-regulated utilities in the United States. FPL serves approximately 4.5 million customer accounts in Florida and is a leading employer in the state with 10,500 employees.
Florida Power & Light turned on a 10-megawatt solar plant at Kennedy Space Center. The $71 million plant — made of 35,000 solar panels — will generate enough electricity to power more than 1,000 homes and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 227,000 tons, according to FPL.
"Like NASA, FPL is looking beyond the horizon. FPL’s Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center is an important part of our state’s clean-energy future," said FPL President Armando Olivera. "Projects like this…give Florida the opportunity to create and attract clean-energy jobs and produce millions of dollars in new revenue for local governments while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fighting the effects of climate change at the same time."
The plant is one of three FPL projects approved under a 2008 law that allowed utilities to pass to customers the cost of building plants generating up to 110 megawatts of solar power without full regulatory oversight.
Lawmakers are considering similar measures this year. The House utilities committee released a broad proposal today to encourage renewable energy production in the state. It would allow utilities to pass to customers without normal oversight the cost of renewable energy projects that produce up to 735 megawatts of energy the next three years, capping the expense at 2 percent of a utility’s 2009 revenue; give homeowners tax credits for installing renewable energy systems; and allow renewable energy producers to sell their energy to utilities at 80 cents for every dollar the utility receives.
President Barack Obama switched on what is the largest solar panel plant in the country — a 25-megawatt FPL plant in DeSoto County — in October. By year end, the utility plans to complete a 75-megawatt solar thermal plant, which will alter a natural gas turbine to allow sun rays to help power it when the sun is shining.
FPL estimates that the total cost of the three projects is $643 million, or about 25 cents a month for a typical customer for 25 years. The three solar plants and another project that has been shelved will bump up the utility’s renewable energy capacity from about 1.4 percent in 2007 to about 1.9 percent.
The company consistently outperforms national averages for service reliability while customer bills are below the national average. A clean energy leader, FPL has one of the lowest emissions profiles and the No. 1 energy efficiency program among utilities nationwide. FPL is a subsidiary of Juno Beach, Fla.-based FPL Group, Inc. (NYSE:FPL). For more information, visit
