Drop a line athmorse@pbpost.com, call 561-820-4833 or follow her on Twitter@mannahhorse. 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. Florida Power & Light says the cost of subsidizing its 24,000 net-metering customers was $30 million in 2020 (about $1,250 per customer). A note of gratitude to our friends at the Orlando Sentinel and Floodlight News, with whom we have worked in partnership to report our stories. Florida Power & Light has a monopoly on power in Florida. Get the FPL Mobile App. independent local journalism in Miami. 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. 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. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. Matrix employees spent heavily on political advertisements for a candidate with the same last name as Rodrguez, who split the vote. This legislation allowed for Kelly to be replaced with a former utility lobbyist, Richard Gentry. The largest city served by the supplier is Jacksonville, but the company also provides electricity to 243 cities in Florida. Florida Power & Light denied any wrongdoing related to political campaigns. [] NextAmid Connections to Ongoing Election Scandals, NextEra Pours Millions into Floridas 2022 []. At the start of the Monday earnings call, Ketchum, the NextEra chief executive, directly addressed the media reports and federal election complaint. ", FPL lauds its reliability and maintains it has the lowest electricity rates in the country. 1 factor to reduce greenhouse gases is the transition from coal to gas. Today, FPL said, two-thirds of its power comes from natural gas, followed by nearly 20% nuclear, 4% solar and almost 3% coal, which comes from a plant NextEra partially owns out of state.. for Floodlight and Annie Martin for Orlando Sentinel, he CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. FPL's former consultants orchestrated a financial takeover of a small Tallahassee-based political news site with a conservativebent that allowed the utility's highest executives to weigh in with editorial decisions, the internal Matrix records show. In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics, She was an ABC News producer. The tactics worked. It is a regulated monopoly which means that the. 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. Few examples are clearer than the case of South Miami. 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. While the report contemplates the impact of fracking and transporting natural gas, it is not quantified. Matrixs influence was felt on matters small and large, from Stoddards city of less than 12,000 to statewide fights over the Florida constitution. 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. Pimentel will rejoin the company on Feb. 15 and work with Silagy until his departure. 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. Artiles has been connected to Florida utilities, including NextEra and its subsidiary Florida Power and Light (FPL), for years. In 2018, Perkins Communications received at least $1.49m from Alabama Power, a leaked contract shows. Newman in his memo also took credit for a Miami Herald story about the allegation. One of Matrixs oldest clients is Alabama Power, which employed Perkins personal consulting firm as early as 1999. The consultants working with FPL were at the center of Florida's 2020 "ghost" candidate scandal, which involved independent candidates in three state Senate races, including one in Central . He has denied the allegations. But Dennis, in an interview last year, recalled receiving a job offer with remarkable similarities to the one outlined in the internal Matrix documents. As you may know, Gera is NextEra Energys Vice President and Chief Litigation Officer. 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. NextEra Energy said its political committee did not make its contribution to Bradleys campaign with an expectation of favor.. Southern Company and Alabama Power run the state of Alabama, Dunn said. A dark money group associated with Matrix LLC mailed attack ads against South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard to area residents. Rob Bradley, an influential politician who was head of the Senate budget committee. 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. Documents show Matrix operatives arranged for the commissioner to record a robocall in which she called Stoddard a creep. She said the support she got from other teams was 'overwhelming. 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. 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. In May 2018, FPL's sprawling. 3:12. During his decade-long tenure as FPL chief, Silagy oversaw billions of dollars worth of power plant conversions from coal and oil to natural gas electric generation. Earlier this year, current PSC members, appointed by Gov. 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. The bill as it is written will decimate this industry.. Too, FPL has not set a goal to reduce its emissions to zero because we believe in setting measurable and achievable goals, McGrath said. 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. 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. Headquartered in Montgomery, Matrix has been described there as the closest thing Alabama politics has to a non-governmental secret agency. Header Image Credit: YouTube, 10 Tampa Bay. "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.". "We're not making a connection," said John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy. Crist has also criticized FPL on the campaign trail, calling the utility out for raising its rates on Floridians and criticizing FPL for attempting to block clean energy with anti-solar legislation. 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. Big power companies operate as monopolies with captive customers in much of the south-east US. Justin Vandenbroeck, the president of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association who also owns an Orlando-based solar installation company, said the solar industry consists mostly of independently-owned small businesses. 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. Many of the documents have since been verified by additional reporting, public records or Perkins himself. 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. The Find Energy report relied on data that is submitted by power companies to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Its unfortunate that our process allows for something like this to exist without accountability.. 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. Still,plants with high emissions are going to draw attention in the overall effort to cut down ongreenhouse gas, experts say. Matrix grew so large that by 2015 it was operating several private aircraft to whisk Pitts and Perkins to client meetings. 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. Over the course of DeSantis tenure, he used that veto power once to block an anti-rooftop solar bill written by FPL. Last June, Florida Power & Light spokesperson David Reuter wrote that the initial review had exonerated the company: "This detailed report found no evidence of illegality or wrongdoing on the part of FPL or any of its employees." 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. 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. FPL has long despised Klas' hard-hitting coverage of the company. It backed a failed ballot amendment in 2016 that would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. 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. 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. 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. The proposed bill would allow landlords to sell cheap solar panels to their tenants. Alabama Power still hasnt had a rate case. Note: This story has been updated to correctly reflect Pimentel's prior roles. The complaint implicated Florida Power & Light in election law violations because of alleged attempts to obscure the source of the political donations. 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. View dataset here. "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. 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. local news and culture, Alex DeLuca As their feud escalated, internal documents started to arrive in reporters email inboxes from unknown sources. 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. Watchdog exposing the attacks on renewable energy and countering misinformation by fossil fuel interests, DeSantis faces Democrat and Utility Critic, Crist. At least its not coal., The intent of the report was to highlight coal and the negative of coal and offer information that may be pertinent to those who live near the plants, Hope said. There has to be a transition. A dark money non-profit called "Grow United" is at the center of the scandal, with records showing direct communication with and invoices to FPL. I feel rooftop solar is beneficial to the environment, and Floridians. Hours later, a story like the one the executive pitched appeared on The Capitolist. "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. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants. The consultants pitched and supported tactics designed toembarrassindividualreporters who they believed had crossed their client's interests. Skeptics of that plan notably included the Office of Public Counsel, thewatchdog group that represents consumers before the Public Service Commission butwas thought to have been more friendly to utility interests after the installation of a longtime industry lobbyist in 2021. Higher electricity bills welcomed millions of Florida residents into the new year. 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. Records from the Florida Senate show that Florida Power & Light drafted the bill, and lobbyist John Holley delivered it to Bradley, R-Fleming Island, and Florida Power & Lights parent company followed up with a $10,000 contribution to her political committee. It grew by 57 percent in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our. The committee donated $25,000 to DeSantis political committee on the next day. Landlords would be able to. Indeed, Find Energy also named NextEra Energy, FPLs parent company, as one of the top renewable energy producers in the country, with another one of its subsidiaries, NextEra Energy Resources, running solar and wind projects across the country. FPL argued that it is more cost-effective to build a power plant than to invest in energy-efficiency programs because building codes and energy-efficiency standards in consumer products have improved. The money was allegedly funneled through a network of tax-exempt nonprofits that obscured its origin. After more than a decade leading Florida Power & Light (FPL), the state's largest power company, Eric Silagy is retiring. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. It ranks third among states for installed solar capacity, although much of that is large-scale, utility-owned solar. The team decided an effort to repeal the ordinance would probably fail. 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. 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. 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. "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. 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. Do you need this bus to transport this many people, and do you need it to be this large? she asked hypothetically. 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. And the job was to come with one key hitch: To accept it, Dennis would have to leave his council position. Florida Power & Light has also invested millions into groups with untraceable, anonymous donors that launched attacks on state and local politicians. Map showing route taken by Matrix LLC to oust Jose Javier Rodriguez from office. 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. From the beginning, Matrix showed no aversion to unsavory political tactics. Join the New Times community and help support Within minutes, one of them forwarded the directive to the CEO of Matrix, LLC, a powerful but little-known political consulting firm that has operated behind the scenes in at least eight states. Out of this, the FPL executive told Burgess, according to the Herald. Artiles pleaded not guilty. 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. 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. FPL's financials remain strong. 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. Thats a trend nationwide, as power company profits are threatened by the rise of distributed renewable energy a technology which scientists say is essential to limiting the pollution that causes the climate crisis. To date, no FPL employees have been charged with any crimes. 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. Companies do not pass legislation. 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. [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. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License by Energy and Policy Institute. Matrix also exerted political influence through the press, with its operatives acquiring control of a Tallahassee-based politics news site, The Capitolist. them with making Rodrguez's life "a living hell.". We took a 1960s-gas guzzling Cadillac and we replaced it with a Ford Focus hybrid, McGrath said. 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. 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. 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. Im not afraid if the conclusion is its not the time to do this. She likened it to comparing emissions from a personal car used once a week and a city bus that takes many trips. 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. 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. Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images 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. FPL did not respond to requests for comment by deadline. We're making smart, long-term investments to stabilize energy costs, lower carbon emissions, and make Florida energy independent. 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. He added that the company would soon challenge the complaint and call for its dismissal. "I want you to make his life a living hell seriously," Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of his vice-presidents about one of the Democratic state senators whose 2020 electoral contest was complicated by a spoiler candidate. Another factor is promoting energy efficiency at the consumer level, Shober said. In 2019, when the electric utility industry was up in arms about a constitutional amendment to open up competition in Floridas energy market, a Matrix-linked non-profit poured more than $10m into groups fighting it. There are emissions associated with the electricity thats used to frack that gas as well as the local pollution issues, she said. In each of those cases, Matrix was working against politicians or policies fighting to curb the climate crisis by encouraging renewable power. Butone thing the leaked Matrix records make clear isthat more secrets remain on the firm's hard drive. They are supposed to be closely regulated, but their profits and unchecked political spending makes them some of the most powerful entities in a state. Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1. Those who provoked the utilitys ire suffered a harsh response. In the Northeast corner of the state, a young, first-termRepublican mayor in Jacksonville was eager to solicit proposals to privatize city services none more enticing than the city's century-old municipal utility, JEA, one of the largest public electric, water and sewer utilities in the United States and a prize FPL had long sought. One of those Democrats,Sen. Jos Javier Rodrguez, happened to be both a prominent member of his party and an incumbent FPL particularly despised. Thats not where the story ends, however, or the whole picture. 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. 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. We'll get them back on Check the FPL Power Tracker for updates on any outages in your area or report one to us. 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. 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. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. 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. We understand this may mean youll continue your campaign to smear FPL or our employees, FPL spokesperson David Reuter told us in the last communication between the company and our reporting team. Matrix showed no aversion to unsavory political tactics that obscured its origin,... Factor is promoting Energy efficiency at the consumer level, Shober said connected to Florida,. Influence was felt on matters small and large, from Stoddards city of less than 12,000 statewide! Making Rodrguez 's life `` a living hell. `` 57 percent in 2020, according to U.S.. Gera is NextEra Energys Vice President and Chief Litigation Officer that obscured its origin reliability and maintains it has lowest! 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