On July 1, 2026, Florida Legislative Bill 1217 went into effect, eliminating the University of South Florida Student Green Energy Fund’s (SGEF) main source of funding: the student green fee.
SGEF was founded in 2007 and utilized a $1 per credit hour student fee that students paid as part of their tuition.
“[The bill is] saying if you are funded by the government or if you have any types of public funding, you’re not going to be able to spend any of that money on any projects or any initiatives that help reduce any of these pollutants,” said Siddarth Bahl, the USF St. Pete SGEF President, told The Crow’s Nest.
Bahl stated that a referendum for students to decide whether they wanted to keep SGEF at all USF campuses was implemented during the 2025-2026 school year, to which 84% of students voted “Yes”. Now, the passing of the bill has seemingly silenced those votes.
The fund had a direct hand in many of the sustainability projects at USF St. Pete, such as the water refill stations, EV charging stations and recycling machines.
According to section 377.8161(1) of the Florida Statutes, The Florida Legislature determined that net zero policies, carbon taxes and assessments stood in the way of maintaining revenue, supplying energy and enforcing their environmental policy on a state level.
In the sustainability field, net zero policies are the act of balancing out rising greenhouse gas emissions by removing them from the atmosphere, as stated by Net Zero under the University of Oxford.
The Carbon Tax Center defines a carbon tax as an tax imposed on an entity for them to pay for the carbon emissions that they emit into the climate. According to Regreener, carbon assessments monitor the amount of carbon emissions that are emitted.
“What that means is that they say that net zero carbon neutral policies are detrimental,” Bahl said. “They damage energy production in the state because in their eyes, coal and fossil fuels those industries, which have a lot of lobbyists, especially in Florida, they feel threatened by net neutral and carbon zero policies because now people aren’t relying on them for energy. They can get it through renewable energy.”
The bill conflicts with SGEF’s very mission: to reduce the harm to the climate that greenhouse gas emissions cause. Their most recent project, the Greencycle composting initiative, aims to reduce food waste in The Nest. Instead of students’ leftover food going into the landfill, it now goes into a composter, reducing methane emissions.
“SGEF reduced our carbon emissions, it made us more resilient. And we have power outages from hurricanes so having alternative energy sources that are not connected to the power lines are nice …” said Dr. James Ivey, a USF St. Pete environmental science and sustainability professor.
Ivey joined SGEF in 2016 as the adviser. He played a major role in implementing the fund’s past initiatives, including the Greencycle composting project. He continued to highlight SGEF’s impact not only on the campus, but on the students as well.
“The students themselves designed from proposal to project management until the project was completed,” he said. “So, they operated all levels of it and gave them that kind of actual hands-on experience … It’s amazing, the students that came through it, they’ve gone on to do fantastic things afterwards because it gives them that leg up.”
Before the bill’s enactment, SGEF’s fund on all USF campuses was consolidated, and about $2 million remained before the bill went into effect. Ivey told The Crow’s Nest that it is unclear exactly what the rest of the money will be put towards. All in all, it will not go towards any SGEF projects.
Jessica Neal, the USF St. Pete SGEF Secretary, described the bill as devastating to the hard work students have put towards making the campus a sustainable environment.
“Our funding came from student fees and supported student-led initiatives. Now, a political agenda is telling us that we can no longer use the money for projects that are important to USF’s student body.” Neal said.
The bill’s passing is just one example of Florida’s recent controversial environmental policies.
“It’s sad to see that our state’s political atmosphere continues to shut down any sustainable initiatives, especially in such an environmentally rich place like Florida,” said Gavin Porter, the USF St. Pete SGEF Director of Marketing, told The Crow’s Nest.
SGEF remains an entity at USF St. Pete, but questions surround their role on campus. The bill has made it to where they now operate the same as other student organizations. Despite this, Porter stressed that the bill’s existence hasn’t stopped the fund’s decades long mission.
“It feels like everyday I see a piece of Florida’s beauty dull from existence, when all we want to do is preserve our future and the planet’s … Now it’s much harder to continue doing so after what happened. But, we promise to continue our goals on campus despite the current hardships.” he stated.
Photo Courtesy of USF Newsroom
