Here is why and how much. Theyve got the lobbying power, and weve got the people power.. FPLs campaign contributions appear to be on pace with the utilitys political giving of over $8.1 million in the 2018 gubernatorial cycle. Even some environmental advocates say the change is fair and necessary because of the fast rate of rooftop solar development in that state. The complaint implicated Florida Power & Light in violations of election law due to alleged attempts to obscure the source of political donations. 1 factor to reduce greenhouse gases is the transition from coal to gas. What we dont think about is gas has to be brought up from the earth. Under Bradleys bill, net-metering customers whose solar panels deliver energy back to the utility grid would no longer receive credits based on the retail cost of energy, but instead receive credits based on a lower wholesale cost. The company provided The Palm Beach Post with 2019 data on emissions and energy production at power plants, including its own, which was in line with the source of the 2020 data used by Find Energy. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FPL CEO Eric Silagy to retire; Armando Pimentel rejoins company, FPL seeks to raise monthly power bills for residental customers by 10%, FPL CEO Eric Silagy to retire; Armando Pimentel rejoins company, Chicago Mayor Lightfoot ousted; Vallas, Johnson in runoff, King asks Duke and Duchess of Sussex to move out of Frogmore so Prince Andrew can move in, Biden Mocks Marjorie Taylor Greene With 1 Simple Hand Gesture, A Nebraska high-school cheerleader competed on her own after the rest of her squad quit. Following up right after Ketchum's comments, Silagy said that his predecessors had held their roles for about a decade each, and that gearing up for another multi-year rate case with state regulators would mean he would have to stay until 2026. In 2020,the plant generated 19.7 million megawatt hours of energy and had an emissions rate of 371.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. The company says the move was not prompted by recent scandals. Silagy, CEO since 2014, will depart the company in April. In one case, at the suggestion of Silagy, FPL's CEO, Burgess included in a newsletter a photoshopped image of the Herald's Tallahassee bureau chief, Mary Ellen Klas, as a pauper begging for money. With these facilities, FPL replaced inefficient 20th-century coal plants and weaned itself off foreign imported oil. If were trying to look all in, theres a whole lot to consider upstream from just the burning of the fuel., FPLs McGrath said the Find Energyreport also doesnt tell the companys whole modernization story.. The ongoing clash between Matrixs founder Joe Perkins, 72, and former CEO Jeff Pitts, 51, is exposing the firms decades of extensive influence peddling on behalf of utility clients. Source: Orlando Sentinel Florida Power & Light execs worked closely with consultants behind 'ghost' candidate scheme, records reveal | Special Report By JASON GARCIA and ANNIE MARTIN ORLANDO SENTINEL | DEC 02, 2021 AT 9:46 AM Top executives at utility giant Florida Power & Light worked closely with the political consultants who orchestrated a scheme to promote spoiler candidates in three . Ricardo Rossello, governor of Puerto Rico, in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, as power was being restored to a neighborhood in February 2018, five months after Hurricane Irma struck the area. In Florida, Matrixs work touched almost every level of politics, from influencing local mayoral and county commission elections to combating attempts to reshape the state constitution. There has to be a transition. This story is a collaboration with Floodlight. local news and culture, Alex DeLuca In all races, the Republican won the election. There was no question the company would be the leading bidder almost by default. The fact that (West County Energy Center is) using natural gas is a plus, Matt Hope, chief operating officer of Find Energy, said inrecognizing that the report factors in a plants efficiency, but doesnt focus on it. That proposal was forwarded to Silagy at FPL but never came to fruition. The majority of Florida Power & Light (FPL) contributions have been to the Florida Republican Party, GOP committees and candidates, and political committees associated with corporate special interests. Rob Bradley, an influential politician who was head of the Senate budget committee. Customers at the time were paying some of the highest rates for electricity in the south-east. But advocates fear that a FPL-drafted bill to rewrite the states net metering rules will slowly chip away at the main financial incentive for homeowners and businesses to go solar. After an early round of reports, NextEra commissioned an internal investigation into the allegations against Silagy and Florida Power & Light in Florida. Note: This story has been updated to correctly reflect Pimentel's prior roles. In 2015, Matrix distributed fliers for a suspicious charity in a predominantly Black neighborhood in North Birmingham. Four other FPL natural gas plants also made the list, but are still ranked among the most efficient in terms of emissions per megawatt hour of energy produced. They dont make money off of the solar power generated from rooftops. I want you to make his life a living hell seriously, FPLs CEO Eric Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of his vice-presidents about state Senator Jos Javier Rodrguez, who proposed the legislation. "JEA is broken," the group boasted on its website, where it posted Times-Union coverage of the utility's involvement in an over-budget, behind-schedule nuclear project in Georgia. At the start of the Monday earnings call, Ketchum, the NextEra chief executive, directly addressed the media reports and federal election complaint. View dataset here. He was previously the chief financial officer for NextEra Energy and FPL and led NextEra Energy Resources, the parent company's renewable resources arm, for eight years. See How. More:FPL seeks to raise monthly power bills for residental customers by 10%. Once we realize the large emitters are large emitters because theyre providing service of great magnitude, and we look at it and we see its so efficient, we have our answer, Patino-Echeverri said. Headquartered in Montgomery, Matrix has been described there as the closest thing Alabama politics has to a non-governmental secret agency. FPL bristled at the inclusion of its power plantson the list bythe website Find Energy, which aggregates and analyzes finalized government data on electricity companies. FPLs CEO Silagy in a recent interview denied knowing about or participating in the scheme against Rodrguez but said that Matrix had done good work for his company. While the transition to natural gas has reduced emissions that would otherwise come from oil or gas, and installing utility-scale solar is an important step, getting to zero emissions takes a lot more than that, she said. And Burgess himself seemed to recognize it was an unlikely proposal, lamenting that "they are such douchebag newspaper people they added the poison pill to prevent ahostil [sic] takeover, even if it costs them hundreds of millions in stock value" (it's not clear in his email what the alleged"poison pill" is supposed to have been). Florida Power & Light is pushing for it as Florida's biggest utility it has 5.5 million customers, about 65 percent of the state. invested millions into groups with untraceable, anonymous donors that launched attacks on state and local politicians. Very early on in this bills ride, I think it has a real chance to settle out in a way that most parties are not upset, he said. 2023 www.jacksonville.com. In May 2018, FPL's sprawling utility empire laid claim to both boundaries,reaching a pinnacle of power and influence rare even among the mega-corporations that call Florida home. A spokesperson for FPL said it stopped working with Canopy in late 2021. Just in December, the Public Service Commission approved a request from FPL to recover costs from customers due to a 10% increase in natural gas prices. You always have to keep in mind what matters most is the rate (of efficiency).. While the utility has contributed over $105,000 to the Florida Democratic Party, neither Crist nor his political committee has reported any political contributions from NextEra or the companys subsidiaries during this or previous cycles. In 1998, the firm distributed copies of a video in which a sex worker falsely alleged she had been sexually assaulted by a candidate for lieutenant governor. Florida Power & Light, one of the largest utilities in the country, abruptly announced the retirement of its chief executive after a tenure marked by strong financial returns, moves toward greener energy and multiple scandals. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy was directly involved in steering funds to dark-money groups led by the consultants who controlled Grow United, the organization used to promote the ghost candidates, according to documents obtained by the Sentinel. This is a tired tactic that utilities have used to maintain their monopoly grip on electricity markets, said Will Giese, southeast regional director for the Solar Energy Industries Association. Can I bring it to you all later today? he wrote. Reported contribution totals over $100k as of September 7, 2022, from the Florida Division of Elections Campaign Finance Database. One-tenth of 1percent of the power comes from oil. McClure conceded the bill is not baked.. They work off intimidating. In comparison, the top carbon-emitting plant on the list is a coal-powered one in Missouri that produced 16.5 million megawatt hours of energy but emitted almost 1,009 kilograms of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour less energy, but more emissions. At the same time, getting to 100% elimination of greenhouse gas emissions for the energy sector is very hard to do with just renewables. We simply believe rooftop solar customers should pay the full cost of this investment, McGrath said. Early in the evening of Nov. 26, 2019, the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, a political consultant working for utility giant Florida Power & Light sent a pair of confidential documents to an email . I looked at the language. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. We'll get them back on Check the FPL Power Tracker for updates on any outages in your area or report one to us. Perkins claims he only became aware of this work after he encountered what appeared to be a damaged hard drive in Pitts' former office and hired an IT team to extract the remains. Theres no time and its urgent, she said. An FPL spokesman, nonetheless, took issue with the Find Energy reportciting concerns over a general legal disclaimer on the website and the use of a misleading statistic of overall emissions rather than the emissions rate. Hannah Morse covers consumer issues for The Palm Beach Post. Miami's independent source of Forgive me for being unserious at a time when companies like Florida Power & Light (FPL)the nation's largest utilitykeep racking up scandals, but it's kind of hard to keep track of the. The governors office also comes with a bully pulpit and executive order authority, both of which DeSantis has used frequently, pushing his anti-woke platform on everything from school curriculum to state pensions, unilaterally suspending elected officials, and creating his own election police agency. But DeSantis election police agency has remained silent on FPLs connection to election scandals, criminal trials, and ongoing investigations, instead focusing on the arrest of 20 individuals who may have registered to vote while ineligible, despite allegedly being told that they were eligible to vote, and the states issuance of voter IDs. It ranks third among states for installed solar capacity, although much of that is large-scale, utility-owned solar. This plant has been part of the solution.. Pitts, who left Matrix in December 2020 to start his own firm, Canopy Partners, did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. FPL has already passed the $5.1 million total amount it spent in the 2020 cycle. Download the FPL Mobile App Now them with making Rodrguez's life "a living hell.". Bob Self/Florida Times-Union. Maggie Shober, research director with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, agreed that the report shows just one of many ways to look at emissions. ", "We've heard (FPL parent company NextEra's) management assurances about internal investigations," the analyst,Angie Storozynski, wrote, but "any legal, political or regulatory inquiry into FPLs conduct would be highly damaging to the stock.". Earlier this year, current PSC members, appointed by Gov. Alabama Power still hasnt had a rate case. During an investigation by this newspaper, as well as the Sentinel and Floodlight, FPL became at least vaguely threatening about our decision to continue reporting. The funds supported a total of five spoiler candidates in state senate and county commission races in 2018 and 2020, as well as efforts to foil a ballot initiative that would have deregulated Florida's energy market. Here is why and how much, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Rodrguez was ousted from office in the next election. NextEras CEO called net-zero emission targets disingenuous without plans to get to real zero, according to reports. "And we support organizations who had that mission.". Florida now has the second-largest solar workforce in the country about 11,000 direct jobs and 31,000 indirect ones, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. That statement was made before additional rounds of damaging disclosures prompted the investigation by the outside law firm. Consultants who control Grow United billed FPL for over $3 million before the entity started moving funds around for the election scheme. Three people were federally convicted for their role in the ploy. FPL has repeatedly denied any involvement in the "ghost candidate" controversy stemming from the 2020 election cycle, but Matrix records show the company's consultants were deeply involved. Florida Power & Light is pushing for it as Floridas biggest utility it has 5.5 million customers, about 65 percent of the state. Developing a green hydrogen plant on the site of the former Indiantown coal plant. Landlords would be able to. Florida Power & Light denied any wrongdoing related to political campaigns. Records obtained by Floodlight and the Orlando Sentinel show that Matrix consulted for FPL, as well as another Florida company, Gulf Power, and Alabama Power. It backed a failed ballot amendment in 2016 that would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. Added Patino-Echeverri: The No. Documents shared by an anonymous source show Silagy directing his team to make life hell for Florida senator Jos Javier Rodrguez. Hannah Morse covers consumer issues for The Palm Beach Post. Namely,how "clean" can, or should, an energy system be to make inroads in tacklingclimate change as the urgency heightens? Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants. The fliers warned residents not to let the Environmental Protection Agency test their soil for the presence of contaminants left by a coal plant. We're making smart, long-term investments to stabilize energy costs, lower carbon emissions, and make Florida energy independent. The largest city served by the supplier is Jacksonville, but the company also provides electricity to 243 cities in Florida. About a decade ago, FPL made the fateful decision to hire Matrix LLC, an Alabama-based political consulting firm notorious in its home state but with little public profile in Florida. He says he told them that he was disappointed, but there was enough work for both of them, based on the good work they had done. On the outskirts of Wellington, just before 20-Mile Bend, stands a behemoth of a power plant on a site as big as 166 football fields. Florida Power & Light president and CEO Eric Silagy will retire this spring, the Juno Beach-based utility's parent company NextEra Energy announced ahead of an earnings call with Wall Street analysts on Wednesday. (Neither Alabama Power nor its corporate parent, Southern Company, have commented on those disclosures.). Reporting by the Orlando Sentinel and the Miami Herald tied Silagy to a group of political consultants who had spent millions of dollars to secretly further the power company's political goals. Building 30 million solar power panels by the year 2025, a goal anticipated to be met five years earlier than planned, and paid for by ratepayers. Along with a private investigator, the group delved into Stoddards past for episodes to weaponize against him, such as a South Miami commissioners claim on Facebook that Stoddard had forcibly kissed her. With Gulf Power in hand, FPL would serve more than 12 million customers more than half the population of the third largest state in the country. So far, there have been two criminal investigations into the campaign against Rodrguez and another Democratic state senate candidate, leading to charges against five people, though authorities have not accused Matrix or FPL of wrongdoing. The sites publisher, Brian Burgess, a former top spokesperson for past Florida governor Rick Scott, also suggested in emails that Matrix should lure prominent Florida journalists to a new site or buy local papers owned by media giant Gannett Company and then lay off most of the clown reporters to inject content into publications without anyone knowing who was pulling the strings. At the Birmingham office where Pitts and the others had worked, Perkins said he found a backup server that appeared to have been beaten with something. Bradley filed the bill in November. [Public records from the Florida Senate], Hillsborough school board talks of delay as key vote nears on boundary plan, Closed New Tampa golf course stirs another round of bickering, Pasco park restaurant plans must wait for study of nearby burial mound, Heres the story behind Parkesdale Markets famous Plant City strawberry shortcakes, McCarthy gives Carlson access to 1/6 footage, raising alarms, Toni Says: Taking Medicare advice from your friends can be costly, Florida schools still struggle with late buses, Florida official unsure if Vertol will still handle migrant relocation program, Murder trial of former FSU receiver Travis Rudolph set to begin Friday, Energetic Dave Canales excited about new Bucs offense, calling plays and QB Kyle Trask. The regulated monopoly is generally seen as a safe, stable investment, but there is some sign the recent public scrutiny could mushroom into a larger problem for FPL. 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