Odds Are Steep For Florida's Solar City

(MoneyWatch)  There's just something attractive about building the city of the future -- or trying to. In that grand tradition, an ex-NFL player wants to build a solar-powered city near Fort Myers, Florida called Babcock Ranch, which studiously follows the time-honored rule of assigning silly and/or pretentious names to suburban settlements.

But in every other way, Babcock intends to be different: Solar-powered outdoor lights, walking distance amenities, electric cars, green spaces, smart grid infrastructure. Furthermore, the entire city will be powered by a 75 megawatt solar power installation by Florida Power & Light.

"If you build it, they will come," said Teddy Roosevelt a century ago. That saying seems to have become the working philosophy for Floridian developers, who have made the state of a graveyard of futuristic cities and theme parks. Time points to Flamingo, an unrealized development in the Everglades, while Greenwire suggests that another, Destiny, likely won't be constructed.

If Babcock were a proposal by Disney, which used Florida to create not only Disney World but the odd, unlikely village called Celebration, I might believe the Ranch had a chance. But it's not, so the past history of non-Disney developers is strike one against Babcock. And strike two is the incredible glut of housing on Florida's market, along with the presence of giant development companies like Lennar that will be feeling their competitive vittles as sales begin to recover.

Strike three, the biggest one, is that the entire concept is somewhat pointless. The idea is to concentrate a bunch of futuristic concepts in one place. But many of them, like the smart grid and solar lighting, are invisible, thus robbing their ability to impress (who cares whether a particular lightbulb is powered by a cord or a tiny solar cell?). Others, like the electric cars, are a recipe for inconvenience if the infrastructure that supports them isn't mirrored in the rest of the state.

Masdar City, the carbon-neutral city that Abu Dhabi is building, is taking a particular tack -- it hopes to attract corporations and become a research center. To that end, the country is planning to invest about $22 billion in its development, as well as provide conveniences like a rail line running into the city. Babcock wants to attract businesses and residents as well, but on an investment of $2 billion. And one must suspect the price tag for living at Babcock would not be low.

Still, while the city itself has grabbed headlines, FPL's plan for the 75MW of solar will reportedly go ahead whether or not Babcock does, creating one of the world's largest solar deployments to date. And the extra publicity certainly won't hurt FPL's efforts.