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. On Oct. 8, Bradleys legislative aide Katie Heffley emailed Holley with the subject line: Net Metering Bill., Good afternoon, Hope youre doing well, she said. While Matrix operatives quietly pulled strings for FPL, strife within their own firm boiled over. 0:00. 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. . 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. 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. NPR and Floodlight also reported in December that people working at Florida Power & Light's political consulting firm had paid a veteran ABC News freelance producer to try to trip up politicians who took stances opposed to the energy utility's economic interests. Once he left, Pitts said Perkins smeared him to clients in an attempt to extort millions. I am concerned that it will result in significant costs here, but I also dont want to destroy the rooftop solar industry in Florida.. But Shober saida missed opportunity is not factoring in methane emissions associated with the leaking of natural gas, from the production of the fuel to its use. And the job was to come with one key hitch: To accept it, Dennis would have to leave his council position. 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. More recently, the company hired an outside law firm to look more broadly at the company's actions. In all, the centerproduces enough electricity for 750,000 homes and businesses. That same year, a consultant told the Jacksonville City Council that taking JEA privatewould "likelyrepresent the largest and most complex" transaction of its kind in the United States. Upon realizing the extent of Pittss shadow operations and abuses of power, we filed our lawsuit against Pitts and those few rogue employees.. That decision catapulted the growth of small-scale solar capacity in the state. At the same time, getting to 100% elimination of greenhouse gas emissions for the energy sector is very hard to do with just renewables. Florida Power & Light customers who paid $101.70 last year for a typical monthly bill of 1,000 . Its the right thing to do for our state.. 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. 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. Download the FPL Mobile App Now Watchdog exposing the attacks on renewable energy and countering misinformation by fossil fuel interests, DeSantis faces Democrat and Utility Critic, Crist. 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. Duke has 2 million customers, followed by TECO with 800,000 . Silagy is to be replaced by Armando Pimentel, a former senior executive at NextEra Energy. Those dark-money groups were controlled by former Matrix employees, the records show. FPL CEO Eric Silagy (left) speaks with Gov. small-scale solar capacity in the state. 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. 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.. DeSantis is running against former Republican Governor and current Democratic nominee Charlie Crist, who has been a vocal critic of FPL throughout his political career. 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.. After more than a decade leading Florida Power & Light (FPL), the state's largest power company, Eric Silagy is retiring. Matrix affiliated groups have also worked to advance power companies interests in Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and in front of the Environmental Protection Agency, public records show. Florida Power & Light is the largest electric utility in the state, serving more than 11 million people across vast swaths of Florida. Rooftop solar in Florida expanded slowly until 2018 when the Florida Public Service Commission allowed electricity customers to lease solar systems with little or no upfront costs. That cost is based on the avoided cost that the utility would have incurred if it were to install a comparable system. Perkins called Matrixs work for the utility confidential. 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. 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. He has denied the allegations. Reporting, primarily by the Orlando Sentinel, showed spoiler candidates in three state Senate races in 2020 were propped up by at least a half-million dollars from dark-money groups in an effort to help damage the Democrats in those races and help Republicans control the chamber. 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. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. Its a tough, and expensive, goal to achieve, Patino-Echeverri said. All rights reserved. To work around the independent, traditional media, former Matrix employees took a more direct route to influence the public narrative about Florida Power & Light. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become increasingly concerned about how the growth of distributed solar energy affects their bottom line. Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Utility Front Group Advertisement Tracker, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, Gas utilities push RNG and hydrogen to expand fossil fuel infrastructure, AGA uses millions of dollars from utility customers to promote a fossil fuel agenda, Internal documents detail how gas utilities greenwash RNG and hydrogen, Front groups and trade associations funded by gas utilities fight electrification policies, List of deceptive RNG and hydrogen projects, FirstEnergy CEO Steven Strah emailed about under the radar House Bill 6 provision that cost Ohio ratepayers millions of dollars. 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. 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. Join the New Times community and help support Otherwise, DeSantis has been largely friendly to NextEra and FPLs legislative priorities, granting the utility $2.75 million in tax breaks on speculative green hydrogen, signing legislation that gave FPL permission to charge customers tens of billions of dollars for burying lines, signing legislation preventing gas bans that would have aided Florida City Gas, and also signing legislation that forced the resignation of utility critic JR Kelly from his leadership of the Office of Public Counsel, which represents ratepayers in rate cases. Matrixs principal, Perkins, says he discovered only after Pitts left the firm that he and other now-former employees had been conducting shadow activities and operations dating back to 2016. 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. That statement was made before additional rounds of damaging disclosures prompted the investigation by the outside law firm. FPLs campaign contributions appear to be on pace with the utilitys political giving of over $8.1 million in the 2018 gubernatorial cycle. But Dennis, in an interview last year, recalled receiving a job offer with remarkable similarities to the one outlined in the internal Matrix documents. 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.. 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. Discover Your Options Lights out? 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. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light's (FPL) profits. There has to be a transition. Even some environmental advocates say the change is fair and necessary because of the fast rate of rooftop solar development in that state. Header Image Credit: YouTube, 10 Tampa Bay. In California, regulators plan to increase fees on rooftop solar customers. Former FPL senior executive Armando Pimentel was named as Silagy's replacement. Only about 90,000 Florida customers, about 1 percent of the states more than 8.5 million customers, sell excess energy back to the electrical grid, but the arrangement has driven significant rooftop solar expansion in Florida. The tactics worked. 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. 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. But in the years that followed, FPL would loosen the grip of its dependence on oil-powered plants, including demolishing a 1960s-era Riviera Beach oil plant, with its memorable red-and-white smokestacks, and rebuilding it in 2014 as a natural gas plant. 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 ranks third among states for installed solar capacity, although much of that is large-scale, utility-owned solar. Can I bring it to you all later today? he wrote. That month, FPL announced a planned purchase ofGulf Power, expanding its reach for the first time into the Florida Panhandle, and in the process snatching away a lucrative asset from regional rival Southern Company, which had owned Gulf since 1925. Silagy, who has been with the company for 20 years, has led FPL since 2011, having risen through the ranks by serving as chief development officer and senior vice president of regulatory and state governmental affairs. The committee donated $25,000 to DeSantis political committee on the next day. Do you need this bus to transport this many people, and do you need it to be this large? she asked hypothetically. Ron DeSantis, approved FPLs rate hike, raising Floridians monthly bills by over $1.5 billion in the next few years with annual increases through 2025, while increasing FPLs profits. Miami's independent source of The CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. "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. FPL consultants also used Broken Promises to boost a spoiler candidate in a 2018 state senate race in Gainesville, FL, according to previous reporting from Miami Herald. Added Patino-Echeverri: The No. Matrix employees had a Jacksonville journalist spied on after he wrote critically about FPL. But the inclusion raises a complex but important question as 21st-century energy policy grapples with ways to further reduce carbon emissions as a climate-change doomsday clock continues to tick-tock. 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. We'll get them back on Check the FPL Power Tracker for updates on any outages in your area or report one to us. 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. Few examples are clearer than the case of South Miami. Want more of our free, weekly newslettersinyourinbox? 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. Customers who are already using rooftop solar power before 2023 would be grandfathered in and keep their previous compensation rates for 10 years. And additional reporting since last year has made it clear the leakedMatrix records contain legitimate information. More:FPL seeks to raise monthly power bills for residental customers by 10%. Two days later, Florida Division of Elections records show, Florida Power & Lights parent company, NextEra Energy, gave $10,000 to Bradleys political committee, Women Building the Future. Its CEO, Mark Crosswhite, stepped down in December. A spokesperson for FPL said it stopped working with Canopy in late 2021. Another factor is promoting energy efficiency at the consumer level, Shober said. It grew by 57 percent in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 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 . 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). 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. Florida Power & Light has a monopoly on power in Florida. Florida Power & Light argues that arrangement is unfair to customers who dont generate their own power but continue to pay for the costs of maintaining the grid that rooftop solar customers also use. 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. What people may not realize is that public opinion is very much in our favor, said Bryan Jacob of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Run by a former Rick Scott spokesman, Brian Burgess, The Capitolist often focused criticism not on powerful industry players or politicians but on individual journalists at publications like the Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post and Times-Union that had crossed the interests of one of the state's large corporations, like FPL. I think they are doing their part. ', Death toll keeps rising in Greece's deadliest train crash, Westown Association announces Milwaukee Night Market dates, Embrace the everyday in UNIQLO's viral wide pants, FlyDubai announces record profit as Gulf air travel booms, Southeast's S.P.A.C.E. 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 firm later recovered more than a million files, according to Perkins, who said they reveal years of hidden, shadow work in Florida. I find this to be horrifying and undemocratic, said Gianna Trocino Bonner, former chief legislative aide for Rodrguez, after reviewing some of the leaked documents. 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. Maybe we should double down on energy-efficiency measures. The utility also launched a series of solar power investments, including the development of batter storage. The money was allegedly funneled through a network of tax-exempt nonprofits that obscured its origin. The company is making renewable energy investments, including: Patino-Echeverri said the utility industry as a whole is making strides to make its plants more efficient. Matrix also exerted political influence through the press, with its operatives acquiring control of a Tallahassee-based politics news site, The Capitolist. We simply believe rooftop solar customers should pay the full cost of this investment, McGrath said. Terry Dunn wanted to examine why Alabama Power charged some of the highest rates in the country. Butone thing the leaked Matrix records make clear isthat more secrets remain on the firm's hard drive. Perkins has repeatedly denied leaking records, though he has verified the authenticity of numerous records underlying recent stories by the Times-Union, Orlando Sentinel and Floodlight, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. 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. Energy poles by Florida Power and Light from Turkey Point nuclear generating station in Miami, Florida. This story is a collaboration with Floodlight. 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. While some of the actions taken by FPL tick the boxes to reduce emissions, more can be done, Shober said. At the start of the Monday earnings call, Ketchum, the NextEra chief executive, directly addressed the media reports and federal election complaint. 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.
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