She also was a corporate operative. Earlier this year, current PSC members, appointed by Gov. Rooftop solar, while critical to fighting climate change, is a threat to the traditional utility business model. 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. 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. 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. The company says the move was not prompted by recent scandals. 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. McGrath added that the companys move toward cleaner energy sources is a march, not a sprint.. And then apparently, somewhere along the way, Jeff and Joe got sideways, Silagy said. 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. 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. President and CEO of Florida Power & Light Eric Silagy speaks to the media after FPL imploded its last Florida . He said what he found was deeply disturbing. The fliers warned residents not to let the Environmental Protection Agency test their soil for the presence of contaminants left by a coal plant. 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. Indeed, the company's future looked bright. 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. Soon, Dunn faced attacks in the rightwing press and online, while Matrix-affiliated groups some of which received millions from a non-profit run by a contractor for Alabama Power filed a motion to intervene in the proceedings. 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. We took a 1960s-gas guzzling Cadillac and we replaced it with a Ford Focus hybrid, McGrath said. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light's (FPL) profits. In a 2020 email, Burgess wrote a former Matrix employee with an idea they could "cobble together however many millions of dollars it would take to buy ALL the Florida newspapers from Gannett and then we could let most of the clown reporters go, save a fortune, eliminate print, and syndicate content across the entire state.". 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. On the outskirts of Wellington, just before 20-Mile Bend, stands a behemoth of a power plant on a site as big as 166 football fields. Going through those tens of thousands ofrecords, he said, alerted him to the extent of work Pitts performed without his knowledge. 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. 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. "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. 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). Too, FPL has not set a goal to reduce its emissions to zero because we believe in setting measurable and achievable goals, McGrath said. A week later, state Rep. Lawrence McClure, R-Plant City, introduced an identical version in the House. 'Off-the-books political strategy':FPL consultants secretly took command, control of Florida news website, reports say, Nate Monroe:Surveillance records at the heart of a tangled mess between FPL and a former consultant. 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.. Records obtained by the Sentinel also show overlap between Grow United and previous campaigns to overhaul net metering. The records show that entities controlled by the former Matrix employees, and associated in an internal ledger with FPL, financially backed an intermediary who had arrived in Jacksonville to help set up Fix JEA Now. 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. You need this large power plant.. Rick Scott.. 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. We need to have the debate, he said. Our programs are designed to make paying your bill simple and manageable. 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. Added Patino-Echeverri: The No. The bill is just one front in a decade-long battle against the policy. The complaint implicated Florida Power & Light in election law violations because of alleged attempts to obscure the source of the political donations. Money from the company also covertly secured favorable media coverage, investigations by the Orlando Sentinel, the Miami Herald, the Guardian, NPR, and Floodlight found. 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 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. The committee donated $25,000 to DeSantis political committee on the next day. Duke has 2 million customers, followed by TECO with 800,000 and then many other smaller utilities. The tactics worked. 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. 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. "We're not making a connection," said John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy. The plan ultimately failed, and Stoddard was re-elected. 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. With Gulf Power in hand, FPL would serve more than 12 million customers more than half the population of the third largest state in the country. Letsgetstarted. Higher electricity bills welcomed millions of Florida residents into the new year. Out of this, the FPL executive told Burgess, according to the Herald. Two decades ago, the company was using more than40 million barrels of oil, the most of any electric utility, McGrath said. 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. Hannah Morse covers consumer issues for The Palm Beach Post. A dark money group associated with Matrix LLC mailed attack ads against South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard to area residents. Matrix also exerted political influence through the press, with its operatives acquiring control of a Tallahassee-based politics news site, The Capitolist. Download the FPL Mobile App Now At the start of the Monday earnings call, Ketchum, the NextEra chief executive, directly addressed the media reports and federal election complaint. In 2020, FPL would help Florida Republicans keep control of the state Senate by contributing to several close races, in the process dispatching one of the few incumbents who was publicly critical of the company. Bradley said the bill language emerged after a meeting she had with Holley and other members of the utility industry. 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 greener energy and multiple scandals. Consultants who control Grow United billed FPL for over $3 million before the entity started moving funds around for the election scheme. The sex worker later testified the allegations were untrue, and that she had been paid by a Birmingham businessman to make them. FPL did not respond to requests for comment by deadline. Under the scheme, a candidate with no political background was on the ballot as a no-party option in an effort to confuse voters and dilute support for the Democrat in the race, helping Republicans maintain their majority in the state Senate. FPLs campaign contributions appear to be on pace with the utilitys political giving of over $8.1 million in the 2018 gubernatorial cycle. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. Inat least one case, they had this Times-Union columnist surveilled, according to the secret records. During an investigation by this newspaper, as well as the Sentinel and Floodlight, FPL became at least vaguely threatening about our decision to continue reporting. Those who provoked the utilitys ire suffered a harsh response. Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School said the whole purpose of firms like Matrix is to conceal that its the utility doing this. Its a tough, and expensive, goal to achieve, Patino-Echeverri said. And an additional kudos to the Miami Herald for its own story on the latest batch of leaked Matrix records, which can be read here. View MapReport Outage About FPL Company News Careers Environment Community Donate to Care To Share Rates and Your Bill And for that reason money spent in the present is almost always justified by the potential future: An election cycle might cost an investor-owned utility millions to meaningfully influence, but failing to do so could cost billions later. one of the largest contributors to legislative Florida political campaigns, would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. Matrix grew so large that by 2015 it was operating several private aircraft to whisk Pitts and Perkins to client meetings. At the start of Monday's earnings call, Ketchum, the chief executive officer of NextEra, addressed media reports and the federal election grievance head-on. Promote the @&;$&!!! Former FPL senior executive Armando Pimentel was named as Silagy's replacement. An Alabama governor the company worked for was convicted of federal felony corruption charges. 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. Still, there could be some benefit for consumers to be cognizant of a plants overall emissions, if its not the only factor being considered, she said. Pitts, who left Matrix in December 2020 to start his own firm, Canopy Partners, did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. Yet he acknowledged that the reports may have had an influence on the decision. Hannah Morse covers consumer issues for The Palm Beach Post. Rooftop solar, while critical to fighting climate change, is a threat to the traditional utility business model. Namely,how "clean" can, or should, an energy system be to make inroads in tacklingclimate change as the urgency heightens? Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. 2023 www.jacksonville.com. He added thatcarbon dioxide is emitted from burning natural gas, which isa fossil fuel, andis being created whether theyre scrubbing or storing it.. Still,plants with high emissions are going to draw attention in the overall effort to cut down ongreenhouse gas, experts say. 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. Here is why and how much. The non-profit, called Broken Promises, first donated the funds to a political committee called Consumers for Energy Fairness. FPL CEO Eric Silagy (left) speaks with Gov. From the beginning, Matrix showed no aversion to unsavory political tactics. Upon realizing the extent of Pittss shadow operations and abuses of power, we filed our lawsuit against Pitts and those few rogue employees.. 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. 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. A Birmingham mayor who employed Matrix got 15 years for bribery, conspiracy and fraud. 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. FPL has long despised Klas' hard-hitting coverage of the company. Legislators pass legislation, she said. Miami's independent source of 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. 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. The proposed legislation could seriously curtail that growth. And additional reporting since last year has made it clear the leakedMatrix records contain legitimate information. Theyve got the lobbying power, and weve got the people power.. 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.. 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. 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. That is your choice, but rest assured, we will hold you accountable if that continues to happen. 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. FPLs consultants used similar spoiler candidate tactics in the 2020 election cycle in three senate races throughout the state. That proposal was forwarded to Silagy at FPL but never came to fruition. Join the New Times community and help support 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. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become. Florida Power & Light has a monopoly on power in Florida. 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. 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. 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. 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. Perkins and Pitts sued each other, with Pitts claiming his former mentor had never followed through on handing over the company despite years of discussions. More:FPL seeks to raise monthly power bills for residental customers by 10%. Developing a green hydrogen plant on the site of the former Indiantown coal plant. Its CEO, Mark Crosswhite, stepped down in December. The Matrix saga illustrates the political obstacles policymakers and experts face as they attempt to cut climate pollution from the power sector, one of the biggest greenhouse gas contributors in the US. The 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 . 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. So Florida Power & Light did something about it. [] NextAmid Connections to Ongoing Election Scandals, NextEra Pours Millions into Floridas 2022 []. Burgess said he never pitched nor solicited feedback from FPL executives on any story or business venture, and FPL spokesperson Chris McGrath said acquiring a news organization would not have made sense as a business deal for FPL. We're advancing solar energy in Florida and you can too with our solar programs. 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. for Floodlight and Annie Martin for Orlando Sentinel, he CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. Matrixs influence was felt on matters small and large, from Stoddards city of less than 12,000 to statewide fights over the Florida constitution. 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. 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