Tampa Electric Company’s Big Bend plant in Apollo Beach, Florida. Credit: Dennis McDonald / TECO Plant Big Bend Apollo Beach
Tampa Bay’s electric utilities are facing a struggle familiar to those of us who were academic delinquents: a bad report card.
The Sierra Club’s annual Dirty Truths report evaluates every American electric utility’s progress towards eliminating pollution-heavy energy production methods.
Duke scored 7 out of 100. TECO scored 2 out of 100.
Utilities were scored by how close they are to hitting three goals the Sierra Club set: eliminating coal by 2030, not building new gas plants through 2035, and building clean energy to replace fossil fuels by 2035.
Florida’s electric companies are preparing for an explosion of demand as plans for energy-hungry data centers expand.
The Sierra Club wants to make sure that fossil fuels aren’t used to fuel that expansion.
The report also says that renewable energy is cheaper, and sticking to fossil fuels is driving the affordability crisis. TECO doesn’t pay for fuel; they add the cost of it directly to electric bills. Fluctuations in price affect rate-payers more than they affect the company.
TECO representative Cherie Jacobs told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that the Sierra Club’s goals aren’t achievable.
“To serve almost 900,000 customers every minute of every day, having 100% renewable energy just isn’t realistic,” Jacobs said. “We have a balance of natural gas as a fuel and renewables to produce that electricity.”
But she also said only about 11 percent of TECO’s energy comes from renewable sources. That’s short of TECO’s own goal, set in 2022, to have 17 percent of their capacity be produced by solar by the end of 2025.
Nearly 90 percent of TECO’s electricity generation comes from fossil fuels, mostly natural gas.
Walter Smith, who leads the Sierra Club’s fight against coal in Tampa Bay, told CL that natural gas isn’t sustainable.
“Gas seems to be the cop out, right? It seems to be the one thing that they would use in order to say, ‘oh, we’re using clean energy,’” he said. “No, it’s just cleaner than coal. It is still affecting our environment in some terrible ways.”
Smith said the score reflects a lack of real commitment to renewable energy, and that utilities need to act fast to address the pressures of climate change.
While coal makes up less than 1 percent of TECO’s fuel mix today, according to Jacobs, Smith said it’s still putting a burden on consumers because the equipment is hard to maintain.
“Having to retrofit that old system constantly is costing them money. They’ve admitted that consistently. It’s costing them money, and it costs us money because it’s passed on to us as customers.”
Ana Gibbs, a Duke Energy Florida spokesperson, told CL that the company’s approach balances economic factors against the climate dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels.
“Our diverse, all-of-the above fuel-mix approach supports the continued growth and economic vitality of the communities we serve,” Gibbs said in an emailed statement.
She noted that power plant upgrades and additional solar capacity have reduced fuel costs for consumers.
But renewables only account for 11 percent of Duke’s electricity, with much of that coming from hydropower dams that may harm the environment in other ways.
St. Petersburg’s “Dump Duke” campaign has grown in popularity. A coalition of environmental and affordability-focused groups recently launched a petition to get public power on the ballot.
The group said electricity would be more affordable with a city-run utility, in part because they believe the city is more likely to switch to renewable energy.
Duke pushed back against that, using a utility-favored firm to generate a report saying it could cost the city up to $4.1 billion.
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This article appears in Sept. 24 – 30, 2026.
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