Political editor Emily L. Mahoney will send you a rundown on local, state and national politics coverage every Thursday. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants bypassing FPL and its monopoly on electricity. 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. Another factor is promoting energy efficiency at the consumer level, Shober said. Theres no time and its urgent, she said. The regulated monopoly is generally seen as a safe, stable investment, but there is some sign the recent public scrutiny could mushroom into a larger problem for FPL. There was no question the company would be the leading bidder almost by default. Pitts in turn has accused Perkins of defamation and of leaking confidential records to the media. Florida Power & Light is the largest electric utility in the state, serving more than 11 million people across vast swaths of Florida. Rob Bradley, an influential politician who was head of the Senate budget committee. McClure conceded the bill is not baked.. 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. 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. He added that the company would soon challenge the complaint and call for its dismissal. Flight data shows Matrixs planes made more than 130 flights to five states in 2020 alone, frequently crisscrossing the south-eastern US but also traveling as far west as New Mexico. Records obtained by the Sentinel also show overlap between Grow United and previous campaigns to overhaul net metering. Going through those tens of thousands ofrecords, he said, alerted him to the extent of work Pitts performed without his knowledge. Pitts, who left Matrix in December 2020 to start his own firm, Canopy Partners, did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. That is a fairly energy-intensive process in and of itself. 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. 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. In one instance, leaked emails revealed Silagy even successfully suggested specific news coverage to one publication. 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. Its parent company had initiated an investigation of related media reports there. Bradley said the bill language emerged after a meeting she had with Holley and other members of the utility industry. 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. Promote the @&;$&!!! One of those Democrats,Sen. Jos Javier Rodrguez, happened to be both a prominent member of his party and an incumbent FPL particularly despised. Matrix employees had a Jacksonville journalist spied on after he wrote critically about FPL. 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. 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. The company's owner, Joe Perkins, and its former CEO, Jeff Pitts, parted ways in early 2021, becoming bitter enemies locked in legal battles in courtrooms in Alabama and Jacksonville. The utility doesnt want to be associated with this campaign.. ", FPL lauds its reliability and maintains it has the lowest electricity rates in the country. 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. Florida Power & Light spokesperson Chris McGrath said the company doesnt oppose net metering but wants to see the current law revised. 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. But Shober saida missed opportunity is not factoring in methane emissions associated with the leaking of natural gas, from the production of the fuel to its use. FPL has also said an internal investigation ordered by its board of directors cleared the company's employees of any wrongdoing; it has also refused to provide copies of that investigation. 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. Bradley filed the bill in November. The fact that (West County Energy Center is) using natural gas is a plus, Matt Hope, chief operating officer of Find Energy, said inrecognizing that the report factors in a plants efficiency, but doesnt focus on it. 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. Investigative reporters have directly connected senior FPL executives, including CEO Eric Silagy, to consultants involved in the dark money campaign schemes. 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. 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. Florida now has the second-largest solar workforce in the country about 11,000 direct jobs and 31,000 indirect ones, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. She likened it to comparing emissions from a personal car used once a week and a city bus that takes many trips. 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. [] NextAmid Connections to Ongoing Election Scandals, NextEra Pours Millions into Floridas 2022 []. Rooftop solar, while critical to fighting climate change, is a threat to the traditional utility business model. Southern Company and Alabama Power run the state of Alabama, Dunn said. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas emitted by human activities, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and electricity production accounts for 25% of the greenhouse gases emitted in the United States in 2019. 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. 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. 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. 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. Landlords would be able to. Inat least one case, they had this Times-Union columnist surveilled, according to the secret records. Energy poles by Florida Power and Light from Turkey Point nuclear generating station in Miami, Florida. Overall, McGrath said the modernization improvements have made their plants 30% more efficient, saved customers more than $11 billion in fuel and kept 165 million tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted in the atmosphere. Map showing route taken by Matrix LLC to oust Jose Javier Rodriguez from office. 0:00. Many of the documents have since been verified by additional reporting, public records or Perkins himself. 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. 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.". 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. The sex worker later testified the allegations were untrue, and that she had been paid by a Birmingham businessman to make them. 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. Note: This story has been updated to correctly reflect Pimentel's prior roles. Download the FPL Mobile App Now for Floodlight and Annie Martin for Orlando Sentinel, he CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. It ranks third among states for installed solar capacity, although much of that is large-scale, utility-owned solar. The issue extends to several states. The company says the move was not prompted by recent scandals. 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. Records show FPL trusted Matrix operatives with millions, including giving $14m to a single Matrix-run nonprofit in 2018 alone. To date, no FPL employees have been charged with any crimes. President and CEO of Florida Power & Light Eric Silagy speaks to the media after FPL imploded its last Florida . He noted that there is never a "perfect time" to leave. Earlier this year, current PSC members, appointed by Gov. 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. He has denied the allegations. 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. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. At the same time, getting to 100% elimination of greenhouse gas emissions for the energy sector is very hard to do with just renewables. In California, regulators plan to increase fees on rooftop solar customers. Customers at the time were paying some of the highest rates for electricity in the south-east. FPL: Plant has "best available" and "most advanced" emission controls, Data shows FPL plant is highly efficient compared to others, Find Energy, experts laud FPL for use of natural gas, FPL touts its 'gas guzzler' to 'hybrid' modernization strategy, Analyst: Utilities 'doing their part,' urgency of the moment requires more, Solar advocates push for last-minute changes to net metering bills, FPL blows up its last coal-fired power plant; announces plans for its newest solar center, Your next Florida Power & Light electric bill is going way up. 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