and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our. Under Floridas current arrangement, homes and businesses that generate less than 2 megawatts of solar power can sell the excess back to their utility in exchange for a bill credit of 11 cents per kWh. NextEras CEO called net-zero emission targets disingenuous without plans to get to real zero, according to reports. In one instance, leaked emails revealed Silagy even successfully suggested specific news coverage to one publication. 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. Once he left, Pitts said Perkins smeared him to clients in an attempt to extort millions. COMMENTARY | Just a 14-minute drive from Florida Power & Light'sheadquarters in Juno Beach is the easternmost point in the state, where the sun's radiant light first cracks the night skyeach morning. $2.75 million in tax breaks on speculative green hydrogen, tens of billions of dollars for burying lines, 2018 state senate race in Gainesville, FL, secured a deal to freeze FPL rates in 2005 as Attorney General, opposed FPLs $1.3 billion rate increase in 2009, calling the utility out for raising its rates on Floridians, largest donation FPL had ever made at the time, Utility front groups spending on disinformation advertising. And an additional kudos to the Miami Herald for its own story on the latest batch of leaked Matrix records, which can be read here. Florida Power & Light customers who paid $101.70 last year for a typical monthly bill of 1,000 . "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. That cost is based on the avoided cost that the utility would have incurred if it were to install a comparable system. Landlords would be able to. Those who provoked the utilitys ire suffered a harsh response. 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. It backed a failed ballot amendment in 2016 that would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. The list consists of 83 coal-powered plants, 16 natural gas plants and one plant that uses petroleum coke as its primary fuel type. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik reported this story with Mario Ariza of Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. So it's particularly jarring to have seen the facility land on a list of pollutingelectric plants that included plenty of old-school coal power plants. Pitts in turn has accused Perkins of defamation and of leaking confidential records to the media. Silagy's departure follows more than a year's worth of news investigations into his and FPL's connections to a "ghost candidate" scandal that saw unserious political candidates run in state senate races to siphon votes away from certain politicians. Even some environmental advocates say the change is fair and necessary because of the fast rate of rooftop solar development in that state. Higher electricity bills welcomed millions of Florida residents into the new year. McClures political committee, Conservative Florida, did not receive any utility money during this time but on Nov. 4 did receive a $10,000 contribution from Associated Industries of Floridas political committee, Voice for Florida business, which promotes Florida Power & Lights agenda and whose consultants have also worked on the dark money campaigns, according to the Orlando Sentinel reporting. The financial entanglement between FPL and The Capitolist dated back to 2018, records leaked to the Miami Herald show, when an FPL vice president suggested the website publish a critical piece on DeSantis' Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum. Matrix also exerted political influence through the press, with its operatives acquiring control of a Tallahassee-based politics news site, The Capitolist. And in 2020, Matrix even harnessed the power of the press for itself, when its employees acquired control of The Capitolist, a Tallahassee-based political news site which it used for favorable coverage, leaked records show. . Alabama Power still hasnt had a rate case. Overall, McGrath said the modernization improvements have made their plants 30% more efficient, saved customers more than $11 billion in fuel and kept 165 million tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted in the atmosphere. "We contributeto organizations where we're aligned on what the ultimate goal is, and from the standpoint of having the Senate at the time, who was being led by (Senate President) Wilton Simpson, continue to be able to be led by Wilton Simpson,I was a fan of that," FPL CEO Eric Silagy, recently told me and several other journalists with the Times-Union, Orlando Sentinel and Floodlight in a wide-ranging interview in Jacksonville. Still,plants with high emissions are going to draw attention in the overall effort to cut down ongreenhouse gas, experts say. We may need some portion of our energy to still come from fossil fuels, because there are industrial processes that are hard to electrify, she said. They dont make money off of the solar power generated from rooftops. Documents shared by an anonymous source show Silagy directing his team to make life hell for Florida senator Jos Javier Rodrguez. hide caption. These customers are a mix of 88.48% residential customer accounts, 11.29% commercial customers and 0.22% industrial properties. 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. FPL has echoed Pitts' allegations and called into question the veracity of some of the leaked records, although it has repeatedly refused to provide evidence the documents have been altered in any way. I just want to reach out and see if I could get an electronic copy of the net metering bill so I can put it into drafting.. Jeff Weiner for the Orlando Sentinel contributed reporting, A moral imperative: how southern ministers are trying to change minds about the climate crisis, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. In Florida, FPL and Matrix demonstrated how a utility and its consultants can work in tandem to resist clean energy reforms. 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. Media scrutiny of the company's political giving began shortly after the 2020 election, when a trio of spoiler candidates tipped close state senate races toward candidates considered friendly to Florida Power & Light. FPL consultants secretly took command, control of Florida news website, reports say, Surveillance records at the heart of a tangled mess between FPL and a former consultant, none more enticing than the city's century-old municipal utility, JEA, dispatching one of the few incumbents who was publicly critical of the company, resulted in criminal charges against JEA's former CEO and CFO, to kill one of the utility's highest legislative priorities, uncharacteristically backed off a winter-hardeningproposal that critics alleged could have led to costly customer charges, had this Times-Union columnist surveilled, orchestrated a financial takeover of a small Tallahassee-based political news site with a conservativebent, planting seeds intended to underminepublic confidence in the Jacksonville agency, offering a job to Garrett Dennis, a member of the Jacksonville City Council who had been outspoken against selling JEA, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. As you may know, Gera is NextEra Energys Vice President and Chief Litigation Officer. Many of the documents have since been verified by additional reporting, public records or Perkins himself. Pairing solar energy centers with battery storage, including the worlds largest battery in Manatee County. Florida Power & Light says the cost of subsidizing its 24,000 net-metering customers was $30 million in 2020 (about $1,250 per customer). There was no question the company would be the leading bidder almost by default. So they opted instead for Mayor Stoddards electoral defeat and changing the makeup of the board, according to a 2018 memo from Dan Newman, a Matrix contractor who was similarly involved in the campaign against Rodrguez. Alissa Jean Schafer is a research and communications specialist at the Energy and Policy Institute. In each of those cases, Matrix was working against politicians or policies fighting to curb the climate crisis by encouraging renewable power. Hannah Morse covers consumer issues for The Palm Beach Post. 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 . Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images Artiles has been connected to Florida utilities, including NextEra and its subsidiary Florida Power and Light (FPL), for years. 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. While Matrix operatives quietly pulled strings for FPL, strife within their own firm boiled over. Note: This story has been updated to correctly reflect Pimentel's prior roles. 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. But Dennis, in an interview last year, recalled receiving a job offer with remarkable similarities to the one outlined in the internal Matrix documents. Pitts, who left Matrix in December 2020 to start his own firm, Canopy Partners, did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. It's easy to pay your bill, view your energy usage, manage your account and more. DeSantis received $25,000 from a dark money non-profit funded by FPL in the 2018 election cycle, according to reporting from the Miami Herald. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. The media reports were cited in an October 2022 Federal Election Commission complaint against several of the "dark money" non-profit organizations that received corporate funds. That candidate later admitted he was bribed to run. Later that year, Floridianswould narrowly elect Ron DeSantis governor, the utility's preferred governing partner. For years, Florida Power & Light has been one of the largest contributors to legislative Florida political campaigns. One person affiliated with Grow United is Abbie MacIver, who formerly worked for Energy Fairness, a group that encourages policymakers to consider the cost of energy choices, as well as their benefits. Last year, McClure sent a letter to state regulators at the Florida Public Service Commission citing the result and urging it to update its net-metering rule. Indeed, the company's future looked bright. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. Months after he was elected, Beeker voted in favor of an energy price hike for consumers. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas emitted by human activities, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and electricity production accounts for 25% of the greenhouse gases emitted in the United States in 2019. Burning natural gas results in about half of the carbon dioxide emissions of burning coal, which also releases harmful metals and gases into the environment. From a public perception, maybe there is value in highlighting where our emissions come from, Patino-Echeverri said. That decision catapulted the growth of small-scale solar capacity in the state. 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. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants bypassing FPL and its monopoly on electricity. An analyst at Seaport Global, a capital-markets firm, said recent reporting on FPL has "made us reassess FPL's risks" and that the research firm has "grown uncomfortable" with the "growing media scrutiny of FPLs lobbying practices against distributed solar and retail choice (deregulation), among others. F lorida Power & Light is an investor owned company. He added that the net metering law has not been updated in 13 years and now is time to discuss it. Duke has 2 million customers, followed by TECO with 800,000 and then many other smaller utilities. Later, in 2019, when JEA executives were preparing to announce their intention to put the agency up for sale, Matrix employees drew up another radical idea. Any report or suggestion that we had involvement in, financially supported or directed others to support any ghost candidates during the 2020 election cycle is patently false, and we have found absolutely no evidence of any legal wrongdoing by FPL or its employees, McGrath, the Florida Power & Light spokesperson said in response to questions for this story. Florida Power & Light is pushing for it as Florida's biggest utility it has 5.5 million customers, about 65 percent of the state. Commissioners said it was the highest response rate they had received on any issue and concluded that no immediate changes to net metering needed to be made. Legislators pass legislation, she said. You need this large power plant.. The last year of Silagy's leadership was marked by high natural gas prices; the global supply chain crisis; two disastrous hurricanes; and a barrage of damning media reports. 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. We are investing in clean energy because its the right thing to do for our customers. Yet he acknowledged that the reports may have had an influence on the decision. These email records were provided to the Times/Herald and Floodlight by the Energy & Policy Institute, a watchdog organization that works to counter misinformation about renewable energy. Discover Your Options Lights out? Bob Self/Florida Times-Union. Moving Florida toward a brighter energy future. 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. President and CEO of Florida Power & Light Eric Silagy speaks to the media after FPL imploded its last Florida . 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. "I think it took a toll," Ketchum said Wednesday of the multiple crises. I just wanted to check in and see if you had any follow up information or language in regards to the net metering bill you discussed with Senator Bradley., Holley replied eight minutes later: I do. FPL CEO Eric Silagy (left) speaks with Gov. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. The job was to be with a shell nonprofit created by Matrix employees that supported marijuana decriminalization and, on its face, had no connection to FPL. He added that the company would soon challenge the complaint and call for its dismissal. In 2018, Perkins Communications received at least $1.49m from Alabama Power, a leaked contract shows. Inat least one case, they had this Times-Union columnist surveilled, according to the secret records. Silagy, the FPL CEO, says the pair initially told him they had come to an amicable agreement about parting ways. While the West County Energy Center ranked 29th on this list for emitting more than 7.3 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide in 2020, equivalent to emissions from nearly 1.6 million passenger cars, FPL is also correct when it says the facilityis among the most efficient power plants in the country. Newman in his memo also took credit for a Miami Herald story about the allegation. The charity was a front established by a state representative. FPL has acknowledged it received the idea but insists the company immediately rejected it. That proposal was forwarded to Silagy at FPL but never came to fruition. They work off intimidating. Duke has 2 million customers, followed by TECO with 800,000 . The companies that are doing the right thing still have those kinds of plants in their portfolio, specifically coal, but theyre working toward other alternatives, Hope said. The warm light races across a 600-mile expanse of land and coast before finally brightening the Perdido River in Escambia County on Florida's western border. The issue extends to several states. The sex worker later testified the allegations were untrue, and that she had been paid by a Birmingham businessman to make them. 'Off-the-books political strategy':FPL consultants secretly took command, control of Florida news website, reports say, Nate Monroe:Surveillance records at the heart of a tangled mess between FPL and a former consultant. Katie Chiles Ottenweller, Southeast director for Vote Solar, an Atlanta-based advocacy organization, is optimistic but wary given Florida Power & Lights clout in the Florida Legislature and its role in drafting the bill. Florida Power & Light denied any wrongdoing related to political campaigns. 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. More: Solar advocates push for last-minute changes to net metering bills, Solar center: FPL blows up its last coal-fired power plant; announces plans for its newest solar center, Electric bill goes up: Your next Florida Power & Light electric bill is going way up. There are reasons to prefer alternatives that are not fossil-fuel intensive. Over the course of DeSantis tenure, he used that veto power once to block an anti-rooftop solar bill written by FPL. 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). We took a 1960s-gas guzzling Cadillac and we replaced it with a Ford Focus hybrid, McGrath said. 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. After more than a decade leading Florida Power & Light (FPL), the state's largest power company, Eric Silagy is retiring. And the job was to come with one key hitch: To accept it, Dennis would have to leave his council position. 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. If this bill passes as it is, it has the potential to send Florida back to 2013, as if the advances of the last 10 years didnt happen, Vandenbroeck said. Burgess said he never pitched nor solicited feedback from FPL executives on any story or business venture, and FPL spokesperson Chris McGrath said acquiring a news organization would not have made sense as a business deal for FPL. nears the finish line on new track at Freedom Field, Amazon's Daisy Jones & the Six Is the Latest in a Long Line of Embarrassing Portraits of Musical Genius. 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. Please provide us with the Personal Identification Number (PIN) that you were given for a co-browse session with our representative. Perkins called Matrixs work for the utility confidential. Florida Power & Light has pushed back against efforts to bring solar panels to the Sunshine State, while runoff from the sugar industry is a major source of water pollution in Florida.. He added thatcarbon dioxide is emitted from burning natural gas, which isa fossil fuel, andis being created whether theyre scrubbing or storing it.. One industry consulting firm has influenced politics across Florida, Alabama and at least six other states. Electricity companies like Florida Power & Light make money off of the things they build: mainly large power plants and the power lines that bring that energy to customers. 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. She also was a corporate operative. The plant ispart of a fleet of new-era power generators often cited by the state's largest utility as jewels in itstransition to modern, clean energy. Rob Bradley, an influential politician who was head of the Senate budget committee. All rights reserved. The bill as it is written will decimate this industry.. FPL has long despised Klas' hard-hitting coverage of the company. View MapReport Outage About FPL Company News Careers Environment Community Donate to Care To Share Rates and Your Bill 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. 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. 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