florida power and light scandal

Adding more rooftop solar is one way to cut down on emissions and make the grid more resilient, Shober said. them with making Rodrguez's life "a living hell.". 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. 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. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants bypassing FPL and its monopoly on electricity. 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. I looked at the language. Landlords would be able to. In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics, She was an ABC News producer. 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 . $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. 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. 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. Indeed, the company's future looked bright. 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 $6 million into state level campaign funds and political committees. In one case, at the suggestion of Silagy, FPL's CEO, Burgess included in a newsletter a photoshopped image of the Herald's Tallahassee bureau chief, Mary Ellen Klas, as a pauper begging for money. The team decided an effort to repeal the ordinance would probably fail. Upon realizing the extent of Pittss shadow operations and abuses of power, we filed our lawsuit against Pitts and those few rogue employees.. Going through those tens of thousands ofrecords, he said, alerted him to the extent of work Pitts performed without his knowledge. He has denied the allegations. DeSantis is running against former Republican Governor and current Democratic nominee Charlie Crist, who has been a vocal critic of FPL throughout his political career. Ketchum also reiterated that when he was named to the NextEra CEO role after Jim Robo stepped down, Silagy had committed to Ketchum that he would lead FPL for at least one more year. Out of this, the FPL executive told Burgess, according to the Herald. Promote the @&;$&!!! That candidate later admitted he was bribed to run. The complaint implicated Florida Power & Light in election law violations because of alleged attempts to obscure the source of the political donations. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. 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. 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. It's easy to pay your bill, view your energy usage, manage your account and more. 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. one of the largest contributors to legislative Florida political campaigns, would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. 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. FPLs consultants used similar spoiler candidate tactics in the 2020 election cycle in three senate races throughout the state. He said what he found was deeply disturbing. I am concerned that it will result in significant costs here, but I also dont want to destroy the rooftop solar industry in Florida.. 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. local news and culture, Alex DeLuca 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. Those who provoked the utilitys ire suffered a harsh response. We need to have the debate, he said. 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. One of Matrixs oldest clients is Alabama Power, which employed Perkins personal consulting firm as early as 1999. 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. 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. The solar industry companies that make, sell, install, lease and maintain rooftop solar equipment is fighting back fiercely, suggesting that the bill will devastate its business. Pimentel will rejoin the company on Feb. 15 and work with Silagy until his departure. Its the right thing to do for our state.. Become a member to support the independent voice of South Florida So Florida Power & Light did something about it. 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. 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. The non-profit, called Broken Promises, first donated the funds to a political committee called Consumers for Energy Fairness. The 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. Newman in his memo also took credit for a Miami Herald story about the allegation. He is also suing Perkins, alleging defamation and extortion. "The way I look at it is it's a little earlier than I would have hoped Eric would have wanted to do it.". I just wanted to check in and see if you had any follow up information or language in regards to the net metering bill you discussed with Senator Bradley., Holley replied eight minutes later: I do. 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). "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. 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. FPL has already passed the $5.1 million total amount it spent in the 2020 cycle. Ten days later, Heffley wrote Holley again. The utility doesnt want to be associated with this campaign.. 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. Big power companies operate as monopolies with captive customers in much of the south-east US. He added that the net metering law has not been updated in 13 years and now is time to discuss it. He added thatcarbon dioxide is emitted from burning natural gas, which isa fossil fuel, andis being created whether theyre scrubbing or storing it.. NextEras CEO called net-zero emission targets disingenuous without plans to get to real zero, according to reports. President and CEO of Florida Power & Light Eric Silagy speaks to the media after FPL imploded its last Florida . 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. While some of the actions taken by FPL tick the boxes to reduce emissions, more can be done, Shober said. 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. 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. ", "We've heard (FPL parent company NextEra's) management assurances about internal investigations," the analyst,Angie Storozynski, wrote, but "any legal, political or regulatory inquiry into FPLs conduct would be highly damaging to the stock.". independent local journalism in Miami. Rogue employees rooftop solar installation on electricity cut down on emissions and make the grid more,! 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