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. At the same time, getting to 100% elimination of greenhouse gas emissions for the energy sector is very hard to do with just renewables. It grew by 57 percent in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The commission held a workshop, which drew 16,000 messages from solar advocates urging it to leave the net metering program alone. He is a former federal prosecutor with experience in public corruption cases.. Matrix employees spent heavily on political advertisements for a candidate with the same last name as Rodrguez, who split the vote. 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. 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. After an early round of reports, NextEra commissioned an internal investigation into the allegations against Silagy and Florida Power & Light in Florida. Perkins and Pitts worked together for more than 25 years, expanding the firm into a national operation with dozens of clients in myriad industries. One of those Democrats,Sen. Jos Javier Rodrguez, happened to be both a prominent member of his party and an incumbent FPL particularly despised. 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. Become a member to support the independent voice of South Florida For years, Florida Power & Light has been one of the largest contributors to legislative Florida political campaigns. Consultants who control Grow United billed FPL for over $3 million before the entity started moving funds around for the election scheme. FPL consultants secretly took command, control of Florida news website, reports say, Surveillance records at the heart of a tangled mess between FPL and a former consultant, none more enticing than the city's century-old municipal utility, JEA, dispatching one of the few incumbents who was publicly critical of the company, resulted in criminal charges against JEA's former CEO and CFO, to kill one of the utility's highest legislative priorities, uncharacteristically backed off a winter-hardeningproposal that critics alleged could have led to costly customer charges, had this Times-Union columnist surveilled, orchestrated a financial takeover of a small Tallahassee-based political news site with a conservativebent, planting seeds intended to underminepublic confidence in the Jacksonville agency, offering a job to Garrett Dennis, a member of the Jacksonville City Council who had been outspoken against selling JEA, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants. Rick Scott.. Companies do not pass legislation. Promote the @&;$&!!! Silagy, the FPL CEO, says the pair initially told him they had come to an amicable agreement about parting ways. 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. FPL CEO Eric Silagy (left) speaks with Gov. It grew by 57 percent in 2020, DeSantis new election crimes office: 52 positions and unprecedented authority. But wherever the pair went, indictments often followed. But Dennis, in an interview last year, recalled receiving a job offer with remarkable similarities to the one outlined in the internal Matrix documents. 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. Ricardo Rossello,. Matrix grew so large that by 2015 it was operating several private aircraft to whisk Pitts and Perkins to client meetings. 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. Download the FPL Mobile App Now 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. 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. A Birmingham mayor who employed Matrix got 15 years for bribery, conspiracy and fraud. 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. It ranks third among states for installed solar capacity, although much of that is large-scale, utility-owned solar. 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. 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. Pitts at the time forwarded a draft of the script to two FPL executives. 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. 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 analysts on Wednesday. Silagy, CEO since 2014, will depart the company in April. Meanwhile, groups aligned with the utility falsely tied Dunn to the Obama administrations efforts to reduce the use of coal. . Investigative reporters have directly connected senior FPL executives, including CEO Eric Silagy, to consultants involved in the dark money campaign schemes. About a decade ago, FPL made the fateful decision to hire Matrix LLC, an Alabama-based political consulting firm notorious in its home state but with little public profile in Florida. 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. More recently, the company hired an outside law firm to look more broadly at the company's actions. 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. 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. 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. We are consistently one of the cleanest electric utilities in the country, FPL spokesman Chris McGrath said. I looked at the language. He has denied the allegations. 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. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our. In Florida, Matrixs work touched almost every level of politics, from influencing local mayoral and county commission elections to combating attempts to reshape the state constitution. That decision catapulted the growth of small-scale solar capacity in the state. Here is why and how much, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Can I bring it to you all later today? he wrote. Bradley is married to former state Sen. So they opted instead for Mayor Stoddards electoral defeat and changing the makeup of the board, according to a 2018 memo from Dan Newman, a Matrix contractor who was similarly involved in the campaign against Rodrguez. 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. While some of the actions taken by FPL tick the boxes to reduce emissions, more can be done, Shober said. "The way I look at it is it's a little earlier than I would have hoped Eric would have wanted to do it.". Legislators pass legislation, she said. 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. Its also up to us to push them more. Switching from oil or coal to natural gas is a very important step, but thats not enough, she said, adding that carbon capture, utilization and storage technology must be considerationsto further reduce emissions. '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. 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. Ten days later, Heffley wrote Holley again. That effort culminated with a Matrix employee signing an option agreement to purchase a controlling stake in The Capitolist in September 2019, the records show. 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. Alissa Jean Schafer is a research and communications specialist at the Energy and Policy Institute. 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. From the beginning, Matrix showed no aversion to unsavory political tactics. Later that year, Floridianswould narrowly elect Ron DeSantis governor, the utility's preferred governing partner. Ive also.ccd Gera Peoples on this note. 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. Many of the documents have since been verified by additional reporting, public records or Perkins himself. local news and culture, Alex DeLuca A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. 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 . ", FPL lauds its reliability and maintains it has the lowest electricity rates in the country. He said what he found was deeply disturbing. The company anticipates the panels will be able to generate 11,657 megawatts. Alabama Power still hasnt had a rate case. DeSantis received $25,000 from a dark money non-profit funded by FPL in the 2018 election cycle, according to reporting from the Miami Herald. 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. FPL has complained bitterly about the news coverage of the leaked records, and there is little indication its parent company, NextEra, is reflective about what the records have to say about the involvement of its largest subsidiaryandits highest-level executives. Hundreds of pages of internal documents which are only coming to light now because Matrixs founders are locked in an epic feud detail the firms secret work to help power companies like FPL protect their profits and fight the transition to cleaner forms of energy. Matrix was never accused of wrongdoing. There has to be a transition. [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. Its CEO, Mark Crosswhite, stepped down in December. 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. And a former regional administrator for the EPA who did business with Pitts pleaded guilty to violating state ethics law multiple times. small-scale solar capacity in the state. It is a regulated monopoly which means that the. The charity was a front established by a state representative. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become increasingly concerned about how the growth of distributed solar energy affects their bottom line. The proposed legislation could seriously curtail that growth. 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. A dark money group associated with Matrix LLC mailed attack ads against South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard to area residents. 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. Discover Your Options Lights out? He added that the net metering law has not been updated in 13 years and now is time to discuss it. NextEra Energy said its political committee did not make its contribution to Bradleys campaign with an expectation of favor.. It's easy to pay your bill, view your energy usage, manage your account and more. Bradley said the bill language emerged after a meeting she had with Holley and other members of the utility industry. While Matrix operatives quietly pulled strings for FPL, strife within their own firm boiled over. Rooftop solar, while critical to fighting climate change, is a threat to the traditional utility business model. Three people were federally convicted for their role in the ploy. 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. McClure conceded the bill is not baked.. 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. Customers who are already using rooftop solar power before 2023 would be grandfathered in and keep their previous compensation rates for 10 years. 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. Indeed, the company's future looked bright. 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. And then apparently, somewhere along the way, Jeff and Joe got sideways, Silagy said. 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. 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. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik reported this story with Mario Ariza of Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. 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