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. 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. The Governor also has veto power over legislation that Floridas GOP-majority legislature passes. 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. Become a member to support the independent voice of South Florida 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. We're making smart, long-term investments to stabilize energy costs, lower carbon emissions, and make Florida energy independent. 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. Customers at the time were paying some of the highest rates for electricity in the south-east. small-scale solar capacity in the state. He added thatcarbon dioxide is emitted from burning natural gas, which isa fossil fuel, andis being created whether theyre scrubbing or storing it.. 2023 www.jacksonville.com. Bob Self/Florida Times-Union. 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 nuclear project was part of what the group deemed a "record of failure," rhetoric that borea remarkable similarity to the talking points later used by the mayor and privatization supporters to justify selling JEA. 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. He said what he found was deeply disturbing. Southern Company and Alabama Power run the state of Alabama, Dunn said. Matrixs influence was felt on matters small and large, from Stoddards city of less than 12,000 to statewide fights over the Florida constitution. 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. 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. Leaked records in the possession of that consulting firm show that Matrix employees worked behind the scenes in cities across Florida for years to advance FPL's interests, sometimes going to extreme lengths to manipulate the political process in the utility's favor. 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. Early in the evening of Nov. 26, 2019, the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, a political consultant working for utility giant Florida Power & Light sent a pair of confidential documents to an email . 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. One person affiliated with Grow United is Abbie MacIver, who formerly worked for Energy Fairness, a group that encourages policymakers to consider the cost of energy choices, as well as their benefits. Last year, McClure sent a letter to state regulators at the Florida Public Service Commission citing the result and urging it to update its net-metering rule. One-tenth of 1percent of the power comes from oil. In comparison, the top carbon-emitting plant on the list is a coal-powered one in Missouri that produced 16.5 million megawatt hours of energy but emitted almost 1,009 kilograms of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour less energy, but more emissions. Theyve got the lobbying power, and weve got the people power.. 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. 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. 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. 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 . Map showing route taken by Matrix LLC to oust Jose Javier Rodriguez from office. 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. 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. Even some environmental advocates say the change is fair and necessary because of the fast rate of rooftop solar development in that state. And FPL is taking other public-relations hits that make the once-unstoppable company suddenly look more exposed:Earlier this month, for example,FPL uncharacteristically backed off a winter-hardeningproposal that critics alleged could have led to costly customer charges. A dark money group associated with Matrix LLC mailed attack ads against South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard to area residents. At the Birmingham office where Pitts and the others had worked, Perkins said he found a backup server that appeared to have been beaten with something. McGrath added that the companys move toward cleaner energy sources is a march, not a sprint.. When the small south Florida citys mayor helped pass an ordinance in 2017 mandating rooftop solar panels on new construction, a network of 10 FPL-aligned operatives mobilized to ensure his ouster. 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. Its CEO, Mark Crosswhite, stepped down in December. It is a regulated monopoly which means that the. Meanwhile, Matrix-led non-profits funded a blizzard of ads against Stoddard, accusing him of using public money for vendettas and placing him alongside infamous sex offenders Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. Under Floridas current arrangement, homes and businesses that generate less than 2 megawatts of solar power can sell the excess back to their utility in exchange for a bill credit of 11 cents per kWh. Duke has 2 million customers, followed by TECO with 800,000 . Records obtained by the Sentinel also show overlap between Grow United and previous campaigns to overhaul net metering. Later that year, Floridianswould narrowly elect Ron DeSantis governor, the utility's preferred governing partner. Later, in 2019, when JEA executives were preparing to announce their intention to put the agency up for sale, Matrix employees drew up another radical idea. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become increasingly concerned about how the growth of distributed solar energy affects their bottom line. Pimentel will rejoin the company on Feb. 15 and work with Silagy until his departure. FPL bristled at the inclusion of its power plantson the list bythe website Find Energy, which aggregates and analyzes finalized government data on electricity companies. 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. She said the support she got from other teams was 'overwhelming. In one instance, leaked emails revealed Silagy even successfully suggested specific news coverage to one publication. We are committed to being as clean as we can as fast as we can without sacrificing reliability or affordability, McGrath said. Join the New Times community and help support 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. Rick Scott.. Burning natural gas results in about half of the carbon dioxide emissions of burning coal, which also releases harmful metals and gases into the environment. 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. Florida Power & Light is pushing for it as Floridas biggest utility it has 5.5 million customers, about 65 percent of the state. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics, She was an ABC News producer. I think they are doing their part. 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. Also, after reports that an outside FPL consultant had tailed a Florida Times-Union journalist who reported critically on the utility, Silagy sat down with reporters to deny that FPL had ever directed anyone to monitor him. "We're not making a connection" between the reports and Silagy's retirement, NextEra CEO John Ketchum said on the earnings call. Can I bring it to you all later today? he wrote. 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. While the transition to natural gas has reduced emissions that would otherwise come from oil or gas, and installing utility-scale solar is an important step, getting to zero emissions takes a lot more than that, she said. The bill is just one front in a decade-long battle against the policy. The email was forwarded on to Silagy,though there is no indication the company seriously entertained Burgess' idea. Top executives at utility giant Florida Power & Light worked closely with the political consultants who orchestrated a scheme to promote spoiler candidates in three key state Senate elections last year, according to documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel. And a former regional administrator for the EPA who did business with Pitts pleaded guilty to violating state ethics law multiple times. Matrix also exerted political influence through the press, with its operatives acquiring control of a Tallahassee-based politics news site, The Capitolist. 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 Matrix was never accused of wrongdoing. 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. 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. In May 2018, FPL's sprawling. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on the firms activities. 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.. Methane is 25 times stronger at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. 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. 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. Discover Your Options Lights out? Maybe we should double down on energy-efficiency measures. 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. 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. It backed a failed ballot amendment in 2016 that would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. 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). 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 . 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. 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. A spokesperson for FPL said it stopped working with Canopy in late 2021. From a public perception, maybe there is value in highlighting where our emissions come from, Patino-Echeverri said. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light's (FPL) profits. 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. 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. 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. (Neither Alabama Power nor its corporate parent, Southern Company, have commented on those disclosures.). That cost is based on the avoided cost that the utility would have incurred if it were to install a comparable system. Holley, the Florida Power & Light lobbyist who delivered the net metering language to the Senate, worked to promote Republican Senate candidates in the close races. 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. Months after he was elected, Beeker voted in favor of an energy price hike for consumers. The company says the move was not prompted by recent scandals. 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. 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. ABC News cut ties with the producer immediately following that report. He added that the net metering law has not been updated in 13 years and now is time to discuss it. The company bought an independently owned coal-powered plant in Indiantown in 2016 with the intent to close it, which occurred last summer. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. Drop a line at hmorse@pbpost.com, call 561-820-4833 or follow her on Twitter @mannahhorse. Political editor Emily L. Mahoney will send you a rundown on local, state and national politics coverage every Thursday. 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 gotta bow down and kiss the ring.. 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. Yet great amounts of power come at a price. [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. 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. From the beginning, Matrix showed no aversion to unsavory political tactics. 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. Ricardo Rossello,. 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. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our. Artiles has been connected to Florida utilities, including NextEra and its subsidiary Florida Power and Light (FPL), for years. The warm light racesacross 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 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. Emails show that Bradleys staff followed up with Florida Power & Light after that discussion. Pitts, who left Matrix in December 2020 to start his own firm, Canopy Partners, did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. View MapReport Outage About FPL Company News Careers Environment Community Donate to Care To Share Rates and Your Bill Miami's independent source of In all, the centerproduces enough electricity for 750,000 homes and businesses. At the start of the Monday earnings call, Ketchum, the NextEra chief executive, directly addressed the media reports and federal election complaint. Their power over utilities in Florida was challenged by legislation proposed by the Democratic Senator of Florida, Jos Javier Rodrguez, in 2019. The money was allegedly funneled through a network of tax-exempt nonprofits that obscured its origin. The company anticipates the panels will be able to generate 11,657 megawatts. It ranks third among states for installed solar capacity, although much of that is large-scale, utility-owned solar. An Alabama governor the company worked for was convicted of federal felony corruption charges. Rodrguez was ousted from office in the next election. Just as well, such a reliance on natural gas leaves consumers susceptible to the volatility of gas prices. local news and culture, Alex DeLuca 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. Bradley filed the bill in November. Follow him onTwitter@NateMonroeTU. 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. 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. 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. Higher electricity bills welcomed millions of Florida residents into the new year. 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. Meanwhile, groups aligned with the utility falsely tied Dunn to the Obama administrations efforts to reduce the use of coal. Please provide us with the Personal Identification Number (PIN) that you were given for a co-browse session with our representative. Still,plants with high emissions are going to draw attention in the overall effort to cut down ongreenhouse gas, experts say. More recently, the company hired an outside law firm to look more broadly at the company's actions. To date, no FPL employees have been charged with any crimes. But wherever the pair went, indictments often followed. 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. 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. 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. While Matrix operatives quietly pulled strings for FPL, strife within their own firm boiled over. Here is why and how much, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. He is also suing Perkins, alleging defamation and extortion. Energy poles by Florida Power and Light from Turkey Point nuclear generating station in Miami, Florida. 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. 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. View dataset here. The last year of Silagy's leadership was marked by high natural gas prices; the global supply chain crisis; two disastrous hurricanes; and a barrage of damning media reports. 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. Few examples are clearer than the case of South Miami. More:FPL seeks to raise monthly power bills for residental customers by 10%. 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. 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. 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. 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. Crist secured a deal to freeze FPL rates in 2005 as Attorney General, and he opposed FPLs $1.3 billion rate increase in 2009, which was then blocked by Crist appointees at the PSC. 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." Newman in his memo also took credit for a Miami Herald story about the allegation. Its parent company, NextEra Energy, has commissioned two separate investigations - one internal, one by an outside law firm - following reporting by Florida newspapers, the non-profit news outlet Floodlight and NPR. Customers who are already using rooftop solar power before 2023 would be grandfathered in and keep their previous compensation rates for 10 years. 3:12. Alabama Power still hasnt had a rate case. 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. In 2018, Perkins Communications received at least $1.49m from Alabama Power, a leaked contract shows. 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. I feel rooftop solar is beneficial to the environment, and Floridians. 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. January 25, 2023 In California, regulators plan to increase fees on rooftop solar customers. The largest city served by the supplier is Jacksonville, but the company also provides electricity to 243 cities in Florida. 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