florida power and light scandal

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. Customers who are already using rooftop solar power before 2023 would be grandfathered in and keep their previous compensation rates for 10 years. Later that year, Floridianswould narrowly elect Ron DeSantis governor, the utility's preferred governing partner. 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 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 CEO Eric Silagy (left) speaks with Gov. Halfway through 2022, however, FPL'sfortunes have markedly soured: The company that just a few years ago looked like it held Florida'sshimmering coasts in the palm of its hand now faces a futuredarkened by scandal, embarrassmentand uncertainty. You always have to keep in mind what matters most is the rate (of efficiency).. Become a member to support the independent voice of South Florida 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. 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. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on the firms activities. 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. FPL has already passed the $5.1 million total amount it spent in the 2020 cycle. FPL has a long history of spending to campaign against Crist, spending up to $1 million against Crists bid for governor in 2006 after contributing $225,000 to Crists opponent in the Republican primary the largest donation FPL had ever made at the time. In Florida, FPL and Matrix demonstrated how a utility and its consultants can work in tandem to resist clean energy reforms. Big power companies operate as monopolies with captive customers in much of the south-east US. We are consistently one of the cleanest electric utilities in the country, FPL spokesman Chris McGrath said. Silagy, CEO since 2014, will depart the company in April. Investigative reporters have directly connected senior FPL executives, including CEO Eric Silagy, to consultants involved in the dark money campaign schemes. In all races, the Republican won the election. 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 . He is a former federal prosecutor with experience in public corruption cases.. 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. hide caption. 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 governors office also comes with a bully pulpit and executive order authority, both of which DeSantis has used frequently, pushing his anti-woke platform on everything from school curriculum to state pensions, unilaterally suspending elected officials, and creating his own election police agency. But DeSantis election police agency has remained silent on FPLs connection to election scandals, criminal trials, and ongoing investigations, instead focusing on the arrest of 20 individuals who may have registered to vote while ineligible, despite allegedly being told that they were eligible to vote, and the states issuance of voter IDs. 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. 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. 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. Rooftop solar, while critical to fighting climate change, is a threat to the traditional utility business model. 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. 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. 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. Upon realizing the extent of Pittss shadow operations and abuses of power, we filed our lawsuit against Pitts and those few rogue employees.. 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 bill as it is written will decimate this industry.. 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. Moving Florida toward a brighter energy future. $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. Artiles has been connected to Florida utilities, including NextEra and its subsidiary Florida Power and Light (FPL), for years. 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. 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. Its parent company had initiated an investigation of related media reports there. Ricardo Rossello,. Nate Monroe is a metro columnist whose work regularly appears every Thursday and Sunday. 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. "It's a 24-hour day job. 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. Florida Power & Light is pushing for it as Floridas biggest utility it has 5.5 million customers, about 65 percent of the state. 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. The largest city served by the supplier is Jacksonville, but the company also provides electricity to 243 cities in Florida. Want more of our free, weekly newslettersinyourinbox? The non-profit, called Broken Promises, first donated the funds to a political committee called Consumers for Energy Fairness. More recently, the company hired an outside law firm to look more broadly at the company's actions. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become. Money from the company also covertly secured favorable media coverage, investigations by the Orlando Sentinel, the Miami Herald, the Guardian, NPR, and Floodlight found. 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. Another factor is promoting energy efficiency at the consumer level, Shober said. 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. She said the support she got from other teams was 'overwhelming. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. From the beginning, Matrix showed no aversion to unsavory political tactics. 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. If were trying to look all in, theres a whole lot to consider upstream from just the burning of the fuel., FPLs McGrath said the Find Energyreport also doesnt tell the companys whole modernization story.. The 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. That candidate later admitted he was bribed to run. He added that the company would soon challenge the complaint and call for its dismissal. As their feud escalated, internal documents started to arrive in reporters email inboxes from unknown sources. 1 factor to reduce greenhouse gases is the transition from coal to gas. Earlier this year, current PSC members, appointed by Gov. 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. 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. Here is why and how much, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Landlords would be able to. According to FPL, the plant also has the best available and most advanced emission-control equipment.. them with making Rodrguez's life "a living hell.". President and CEO of Florida Power & Light Eric Silagy speaks to the media after FPL imploded its last Florida . 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. 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. 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. 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. The commission held a workshop, which drew 16,000 messages from solar advocates urging it to leave the net metering program alone. Map showing route taken by Matrix LLC to oust Jose Javier Rodriguez from office. 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. 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. Thats not where the story ends, however, or the whole picture. Pitts in turn has accused Perkins of defamation and of leaking confidential records to the media. 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. 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. Its unfortunate that our process allows for something like this to exist without accountability.. 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. Under the leadership of Eric Silagy, 54, the company has been tied to allegations of campaign finance violations, media manipulation, and the surveillance of critical journalists. 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. I am concerned that it will result in significant costs here, but I also dont want to destroy the rooftop solar industry in Florida.. Methane is 25 times stronger at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. 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. It backed a failed ballot amendment in 2016 that would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License by Energy and Policy Institute. 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). That statement was made before additional rounds of damaging disclosures prompted the investigation by the outside law firm. 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. Here is why and how much. Florida Power & Light is the largest electric utility in the state, serving more than 11 million people across vast swaths of Florida. Out of this, the FPL executive told Burgess, according to the Herald. That is a fairly energy-intensive process in and of itself. The Senate District 37 scandal was one of three races in Florida in the 2020 cycle that followed a nearly identical pattern: A close race, an unknown third party candidate to siphon some of the votes, and campaign . 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. 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. Discover Your Options Lights out? Florida Power & Light customers who paid $101.70 last year for a typical monthly bill of 1,000 . The team decided an effort to repeal the ordinance would probably fail. [] NextAmid Connections to Ongoing Election Scandals, NextEra Pours Millions into Floridas 2022 []. In May 2018, FPL's sprawling. The money was allegedly funneled through a network of tax-exempt nonprofits that obscured its origin. Rob Bradley, an influential politician who was head of the Senate budget committee. We took a 1960s-gas guzzling Cadillac and we replaced it with a Ford Focus hybrid, McGrath said. Florida Power & Light spokesperson Chris McGrath said the company doesnt oppose net metering but wants to see the current law revised. 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. 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. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants. 3:12. 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. independent local journalism in Miami. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik reported this story with Mario Ariza of Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Can I bring it to you all later today? he wrote. 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. Silagy said the email in which he told his team to make Rodrguezs life a living hell was a poor choice of words. 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. Matrix grew so large that by 2015 it was operating several private aircraft to whisk Pitts and Perkins to client meetings. Too, FPL has not set a goal to reduce its emissions to zero because we believe in setting measurable and achievable goals, McGrath said. The records also demonstrate that secrecy is no substitute for sophistication or savvy: Some of Matrix's tricks did little to improve FPL's business prospects and, in fact, have now served to humiliate the utility like Silagy's use of a pseudonym email account belonging to a fictitious "Theodore Hayes" to communicate with Matrix employees (a tactic detailed in the leaked Matrix records that both FPL and Silagy himself confirmed took place). The fliers warned residents not to let the Environmental Protection Agency test their soil for the presence of contaminants left by a coal plant. 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. Bradley is married to former state Sen. 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. 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. Few examples are clearer than the case of South Miami. He is suing Pitts in Alabama for fraud and conspiracy. [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. Florida Power & Light denied any wrongdoing related to political campaigns. A dark money group associated with Matrix LLC mailed attack ads against South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard to area residents. This plant has been part of the solution.. Matrix also exerted political influence through the press, with its operatives acquiring control of a Tallahassee-based politics news site, The Capitolist. "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. The list consists of 83 coal-powered plants, 16 natural gas plants and one plant that uses petroleum coke as its primary fuel type. 11:52AM. Just as well, such a reliance on natural gas leaves consumers susceptible to the volatility of gas prices. 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.

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