NPR and Floodlight reported the same consulting firm did work in Alabama for that state's dominant energy utility, Alabama Power, and funneled money to news sites there that reported negatively on the utility's critics and regulators. And for that reason money spent in the present is almost always justified by the potential future: An election cycle might cost an investor-owned utility millions to meaningfully influence, but failing to do so could cost billions later. 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. Bradley, who received Florida Power & Lights draft bill, is a first-term senator who is close to Senate leadership and chairs the Community Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Congressional Reapportionment. But utility experts have testified to the Florida Public Service Commission that rooftop solar in the state could grow at a rate of 39 percent a year until 2025 if Floridas current net metering system is left in place. The company says the move was not prompted by recent scandals. As a result of the current system, my constituents are being forced to subsidize the decisions of neighbors in other counties who are in a position to be able to put these expensive systems on their homes, Bradley said. FPL is currently modernizing its plant in Dania Beach, expecting the new gas plant to come online this year, but doesnt anticipate building a new natural gas-powered plant in its 10-year outlook. 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.. Florida Power & Light says the cost of subsidizing its 24,000 net-metering customers was $30 million in 2020 (about $1,250 per customer). In the remarkably successful years of its ambitious expansionism, secret records show FPL may have also been sowing the seeds of its more uncertain present. 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. He added thatcarbon dioxide is emitted from burning natural gas, which isa fossil fuel, andis being created whether theyre scrubbing or storing it.. The Matrix saga illustrates the political obstacles policymakers and experts face as they attempt to cut climate pollution from the power sector, one of the biggest greenhouse gas contributors in the US. The effort to privatize Jacksonville's utility imploded in scandal and recrimination, prompting a two-year federal investigation that resulted in criminal charges against JEA's former CEO and CFO. Another factor is promoting energy efficiency at the consumer level, Shober said. "When you think about all the challenges that he had to overcome, with the hurricanes and high natural gas prices and inflation and supply chain and, you know, the media allegations and all those things, I think it took a toll on Eric that year," Ketchum said during a question-and-answer session on the call. Matrix employees spent heavily on political advertisements for a candidate with the same last name as Rodrguez, who split the vote. Customers at the time were paying some of the highest rates for electricity in the south-east. Pitts, who left Matrix in December 2020 to start his own firm, Canopy Partners, did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. 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. "Based on information in our possession, we believe that FPL would not be found liable for any of the Florida Campaign finance law violations as alleged in the media articles," Ketchum said. Do you need this bus to transport this many people, and do you need it to be this large? she asked hypothetically. Florida Power & Light customers who paid $101.70 last year for a typical monthly bill of 1,000 . 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. The Find Energy report relied on data that is submitted by power companies to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The money was allegedly funneled through a network of tax-exempt nonprofits that obscured its origin. According to FPL, the plant also has the best available and most advanced emission-control equipment.. 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. Florida is one of 47 states that allow households and businesses that produce power to sell it back to the grid at a set rate. Higher electricity bills welcomed millions of Florida residents into the new year. The Governor appoints members to the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC), the regulatory body responsible for overseeing utilities and determining their profitability, making influence over the Governors office critical to NextEras shareholders. At the start of Monday's earnings call, Ketchum, the chief executive officer of NextEra, addressed media reports and the federal election grievance head-on. 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. 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. He added that the company would soon challenge the complaint and call for its dismissal. FPLs business-as-usual political contributions have continued amid intense media focus on its role in ongoing dark money election scandals and related criminal trials, with state lawmakers and a member of Congress calling for further investigation into FPLs involvement. For example, in documents obtained by reporters, Silagy had emailed two of his vice presidents to make a state senator's "life a living hell" after proposing a pro-solar bill. The non-profit, called Broken Promises, first donated the funds to a political committee called Consumers for Energy Fairness. Those dark-money groups were controlled by former Matrix employees, the records show. Investigative reporters have directly connected senior FPL executives, including CEO Eric Silagy, to consultants involved in the dark money campaign schemes. In a 2020 email, Burgess wrote a former Matrix employee with an idea they could "cobble together however many millions of dollars it would take to buy ALL the Florida newspapers from Gannett and then we could let most of the clown reporters go, save a fortune, eliminate print, and syndicate content across the entire state.". We are committed to being as clean as we can as fast as we can without sacrificing reliability or affordability, McGrath said. As their feud escalated, internal documents started to arrive in reporters email inboxes from unknown sources. 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. Florida Power & Light denied any wrongdoing related to political campaigns. Inat least one case, they had this Times-Union columnist surveilled, according to the secret records. "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 effort culminated with a Matrix employee signing an option agreement to purchase a controlling stake in The Capitolist in September 2019, the records show. As for Silagy's departure, Ketchum said, "It's a little earlier than Eric would've wanted to do it.". 11:52AM. NextEras CEO called net-zero emission targets disingenuous without plans to get to real zero, according to reports. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become. Letsgetstarted. Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1. 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. To date, no FPL employees have been charged with any crimes. Customer Support. Records show FPL trusted Matrix operatives with millions, including giving $14m to a single Matrix-run nonprofit in 2018 alone. The company bought an independently owned coal-powered plant in Indiantown in 2016 with the intent to close it, which occurred last summer. independent local journalism in Miami. Im hopeful this is a conversation starter but, at the same time, its really hard to have a conversation when you have a gun to your head. In 2020, FPL would help Florida Republicans keep control of the state Senate by contributing to several close races, in the process dispatching one of the few incumbents who was publicly critical of the company. We are investing in clean energy because its the right thing to do for our customers. ", FPL lauds its reliability and maintains it has the lowest electricity rates in the country. 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. A local law firm and the company that owned the coal plant used the charity to pay the representative. Want more of our free, weekly newslettersinyourinbox? The bill as it is written will decimate this industry.. Miami's independent source of Methane is 25 times stronger at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. (Neither Alabama Power nor its corporate parent, Southern Company, have commented on those disclosures.). That proposal was forwarded to Silagy at FPL but never came to fruition. Many of the documents have since been verified by additional reporting, public records or Perkins himself. The consultants pitched and supported tactics designed toembarrassindividualreporters who they believed had crossed their client's interests. In California, regulators plan to increase fees on rooftop solar customers. The complaint implicated Florida Power & Light in election law violations because of alleged attempts to obscure the source of the political donations. An Alabama governor the company worked for was convicted of federal felony corruption charges. Still, there could be some benefit for consumers to be cognizant of a plants overall emissions, if its not the only factor being considered, she said. He added that the net metering law has not been updated in 13 years and now is time to discuss it. "I think it took a toll," Ketchum said Wednesday of the multiple crises. As you may know, Gera is NextEra Energys Vice President and Chief Litigation Officer. Howard Crystal, an attorney for the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said that US utilities are allowed monopoly power because they are supposed to expand the public interest. 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. one of the largest contributors to legislative Florida political campaigns, would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. Yet great amounts of power come at a price. These customers are a mix of 88.48% residential customer accounts, 11.29% commercial customers and 0.22% industrial properties. Namely,how "clean" can, or should, an energy system be to make inroads in tacklingclimate change as the urgency heightens? 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. Ketchum also reiterated that when he was named to the NextEra CEO role after Jim Robo stepped down, Silagy had committed to Ketchum that he would lead FPL for at least one more year. A state board recently rebuffed a request from several Democratic lawmakers for an audit of Florida Power & Light's finances, which the representatives sought following reports linking the. The commission held a workshop, which drew 16,000 messages from solar advocates urging it to leave the net metering program alone. 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. Energy poles by Florida Power and Light from Turkey Point nuclear generating station in Miami, Florida. We'll get them back on Check the FPL Power Tracker for updates on any outages in your area or report one to us. The team decided an effort to repeal the ordinance would probably fail. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light's (FPL) profits. And a former regional administrator for the EPA who did business with Pitts pleaded guilty to violating state ethics law multiple times. He argued that customers with rooftop solar are being subsidized by other customers who continue to buy electricity and pay to maintain the power grid. Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School said the whole purpose of firms like Matrix is to conceal that its the utility doing this. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our. The largest city served by the supplier is Jacksonville, but the company also provides electricity to 243 cities in Florida. I looked at the language. As such, it would seem the FPL plantsinclusion on the list is unfair. You always have to keep in mind what matters most is the rate (of efficiency).. FPL has been ensnaredin public scandal over aggressive political tactics that Florida newspapers have laid bare since late last year. NextEra officials say that investigation is close to completion. Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images Perkins and Pitts sued each other, with Pitts claiming his former mentor had never followed through on handing over the company despite years of discussions. That decision catapulted the growth of small-scale solar capacity in the state. Florida Power and Light is launching a webpage dedicated to attacking the Miami Herald specifically Tallahassee bureau chief Mary Ellen Klas for its "biased" reporting on proposed . A spokesperson for FPL said it stopped working with Canopy in late 2021. "It is a decision that is not easy, but I feel good about moving forward and doing it when the company is in its strongest financial and operational position that it's ever been in with a very strong leadership team.". 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. That statement was made before additional rounds of damaging disclosures prompted the investigation by the outside law firm. The sex worker later testified the allegations were untrue, and that she had been paid by a Birmingham businessman to make them. DeSantis, who is attempting to build a populist profile ahead of a presidential run in 2024,has turned on FPL, having used his veto pen earlier this year to kill one of the utility's highest legislative priorities a controversial bill that would have limited the growth of the residential rooftop solar industryin Florida. Bradley said she is open to discussing alternative models for her bill, including a system in use in the Carolinas to compensate rooftop solar customers who provide extra power for the grid when it is most needed, during peak hours. I think we see in the trend overall nationally is were not moving fast enough toward these cleaner sources as we clearly need to, she said. In Florida, FPL and Matrix demonstrated how a utility and its consultants can work in tandem to resist clean energy reforms. 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. Pairing solar energy centers with battery storage, including the worlds largest battery in Manatee County. That growth has the utilities, and legislators, worried. 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. TALLAHASSEE Rooftop solar power generation in Florida is still a nascent industry, but Florida Power & Light, the nations largest power company, is pushing to hamstring it by writing and hand-delivering legislation the company asked state lawmakers to introduce, according to records obtained by the Miami Herald and Floodlight. 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. Hannah Morse covers consumer issues for The Palm Beach Post. Theres no time and its urgent, she said. The West County Energy Center, first serving Florida Power & Light customers in 2009 before reaching its current capacity two years later, is a natural gas-burning plant. FPL deployed lobbyists to the capital, while Matrix hired private investigators to dig for dirt and had operatives funnel dark money and order attack ads. Net metering is a popular program that gives people the right to choose the energy that works for them, provides benefits to all ratepayers and creates thousands of energy jobs across Florida.. Added Patino-Echeverri: The No. Butone thing the leaked Matrix records make clear isthat more secrets remain on the firm's hard drive. In other words, FPL's gas-fired plant produced almost 20% more power but with a third of the emissions as the coal-powered plant. The charity was a front established by a state representative. See How. Florida Power & Light has also invested millions into groups with untraceable, anonymous donors that launched attacks on state and local politicians. 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. More recently, the company hired an outside law firm to look more broadly at the company's actions. They dont make money off of the solar power generated from rooftops. Discover Your Options Lights out? 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. "We could even do it stealthily so we could inject content into all those publications and nobody has to know who's actually pulling the strings," he wrote. influencing local mayoral and county commission elections, a Miami Herald story about the allegation, graphic showing acquisition flow of The Capitolist, Graphic showing number of stops taken by Matrix private planes. All of that work was a closely held secret until recently. Thats not where the story ends, however, or the whole picture. Quick Links Start, Stop, Move Find My Account Number Pay Online Support Categories Billing & Payments My Account Start, Stop, Move Programs Business Customer Save Money & Energy Power Related Concerns Using FPL.com General Support Virtual Chat Most Common Links Its CEO, Mark Crosswhite, stepped down in December. Switching from oil or coal to natural gas is a very important step, but thats not enough, she said, adding that carbon capture, utilization and storage technology must be considerationsto further reduce emissions. FPL has acknowledged it received the idea but insists the company immediately rejected it. So Florida Power & Light did something about it. The ghostcandidate controversy set off a wide-ranging criminal investigation by prosecutors in Miami, whosecured a guilty pleafrom the independent candidate in District 37 andfiled felony charges against Frank Artiles, a former Republican lawmaker accused of bribing the candidate to run. Headquartered in Montgomery, Matrix has been described there as the closest thing Alabama politics has to a non-governmental secret agency. The string of controversy spans nearly the entire Florida Peninsula already an impressive trail of dirty tricks. TALLAHASSEE Recent revelations about Florida Power & Light's involvement in a dark money scheme to siphon votes away from Senate Democratic candidates prompted its parent company to conduct. Florida Power & Light, whose work with dark-money political committees helped to secure Republican control of the state Senate in the 2020 elections, asked state Sen. Jennifer Bradley to sponsor its top-priority bill: legislation that would hobble rooftop solar by preventing homeowners and businesses from offsetting their costs by selling excess power back to the company, an arrangement known as net metering. 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. [] NextAmid Connections to Ongoing Election Scandals, NextEra Pours Millions into Floridas 2022 []. One of those Democrats,Sen. Jos Javier Rodrguez, happened to be both a prominent member of his party and an incumbent FPL particularly despised. In his Seeking Rents newsletter, publisher Jason Garcia called this decision: one of the most controversial decisions made in recent years by the PSC, a five-member panel comprised of four DeSantis appointees and one remaining holdover from former Gov. Matrix also exerted political influence through the press, with its operatives acquiring control of a Tallahassee-based politics news site, The Capitolist. FPL's financials remain strong. . 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. Duke has 2 million customers, followed by TECO with 800,000 . 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. Perkins has alleged in a lawsuit that Pitts led a rogue group of Matrix employees who undertook work on FPL's behalf that he only learned about after Pitts departed work worth millions in fees. 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. [But] now we have this incredible corruption and a reversal of that because they are using their advantage to hang on to power and undermine democracy, he said. 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 CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. Moving Florida toward a brighter energy future. In Perkins telling, he was getting ready to hand over leadership of Matrix in December 2020 when Pitts surprised him by leaving the firm, taking three employees as well as most of Matrixs Florida-based clients with him to launch Canopy. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy Retires in Wake of Matrix Consultant Scandal Alex DeLuca January 25, 2023 11:52AM FPL CEO Eric Silagy (left) speaks with Gov. 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. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License by Energy and Policy Institute. An organization that acts like a mafia should be treated like one, Stoddard said.In a statement, Newman acknowledged managing the campaign against Stoddard and hiring a private investigator to look into the former mayors personal life. to documents submitted to the Florida Public Service Commission. Taken together, the internal Matrix records depict a group of well-resourced executives and their enablers who have nurtured twisted views of theFirst Amendment and American democracy, and who have little hesitation over going to remarkable and troubling lengths to achieve their goals. I am concerned that it will result in significant costs here, but I also dont want to destroy the rooftop solar industry in Florida.. 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. 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. The Florida Panhandle is in revolt over bills that some FPL customers claim are double or triple what they were paying under Southern Company's stewardship of Gulf Power. FPL did not respond to requests for comment by deadline. 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. 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. 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. The company conducted an internal investigation and "found no evidence of any issues at all, any illegality or any wrongdoing on the part of FPL or any of its employees. He is also suing Perkins, alleging defamation and extortion. Its parent company had initiated an investigation of related media reports there. January 25, 2023 This particular power plant ranked in the top third,alongwithcoal-powered plants, in thelist of 100 power plants across the country that belched out the most carbon dioxide in 2020, according to thereport by Find Energy. 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. The committee donated $25,000 to DeSantis political committee on the next day. Heffley suggested that he could send it via email today or we will be at the Capitol next week., Holley declined to provide an electronic version and offered to drop it off in person the following week. The fliers warned residents not to let the Environmental Protection Agency test their soil for the presence of contaminants left by a coal plant. Asked by Wall Street analysts during an earnings call on Wednesday whether Silagy's retirement was in any way prompted by those reports, the parent company's chief executive asserted that was not the case. But FPL was fixated on JEA; buying it would lock Florida's entire East Coast into FPL's service territory, another bold expansion of FPL's power. Upon realizing the extent of Pittss shadow operations and abuses of power, we filed our lawsuit against Pitts and those few rogue employees.. Few examples are clearer than the case of South Miami. Hundreds of pages of internal documents which are only coming to light now because Matrixs founders are locked in an epic feud detail the firms secret work to help power companies like FPL protect their profits and fight the transition to cleaner forms of energy. Two decades ago, the company was using more than40 million barrels of oil, the most of any electric utility, McGrath said. It's easy to pay your bill, view your energy usage, manage your account and more. FPL emerged from that episode empty handed, a particularly punishing outcome in the world of investor-owned utilities, which are locked in a rat race to grow bigger or die. This plant has been part of the solution.. With two months until voters elect the next Florida Governor, NextEra Energy and its subsidiaries, Florida Power & Light and Florida City Gas, have poured nearly $6 million into state level campaign funds and political committees. 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