The company provided The Palm Beach Post with 2019 data on emissions and energy production at power plants, including its own, which was in line with the source of the 2020 data used by Find Energy. In each of those cases, Matrix was working against politicians or policies fighting to curb the climate crisis by encouraging renewable power. 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. McGrath added that the companys move toward cleaner energy sources is a march, not a sprint.. Hannah Morse covers consumer issues for The Palm Beach Post. The company conducted an internal investigation and "found no evidence of any issues at all, any illegality or any wrongdoing on the part of FPL or any of its employees. In 2018, Perkins Communications received at least $1.49m from Alabama Power, a leaked contract shows. 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). Many of the documents have since been verified by additional reporting, public records or Perkins himself. The complaint implicated Florida Power & Light in election law violations because of alleged attempts to obscure the source of the political donations. 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. 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. Learn More About FPL News Company Careers Environment Community Donate to Care To Share Rates and Your Bill About Energy Energy My Way Ensuring Reliability Clean Energy Solar Electric Vehicles Power Disturbances Safety Partner Resources Supplier Home and Login PIC Login These customers are a mix of 88.48% residential customer accounts, 11.29% commercial customers and 0.22% industrial properties. Download the FPL Mobile App Now "I want you to make his life a living hell seriously," Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of his vice-presidents about one of the Democratic state senators whose 2020 electoral contest was complicated by a spoiler candidate. The proposed legislation could seriously curtail that growth. Indeed, the company's future looked bright. The company says the move was not prompted by recent scandals. The utility also launched a series of solar power investments, including the development of batter storage. 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.. 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. Matrix employees had a Jacksonville journalist spied on after he wrote critically about FPL. Moving Florida toward a brighter energy future. Records obtained by the Sentinel also show overlap between Grow United and previous campaigns to overhaul net metering. After an early round of reports, NextEra commissioned an internal investigation into the allegations against Silagy and Florida Power & Light in Florida. 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 . FPL has been ensnaredin public scandal over aggressive political tactics that Florida newspapers have laid bare since late last year. 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. 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. I looked at the language. 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.". 11:52AM. 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. Silagy, CEO since 2014, will depart the company in April. NextEra Energy said its political committee did not make its contribution to Bradleys campaign with an expectation of favor.. The ghostcandidate controversy set off a wide-ranging criminal investigation by prosecutors in Miami, whosecured a guilty pleafrom the independent candidate in District 37 andfiled felony charges against Frank Artiles, a former Republican lawmaker accused of bribing the candidate to run. And additional reporting since last year has made it clear the leakedMatrix records contain legitimate information. 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. independent local journalism in Miami. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License by Energy and Policy Institute. Knowing this may inspire consumers to seek out energy-efficient solutions in their own homes like LED lighting, efficient air conditioners or improving insulation and be more aware of the electricity they use, how they use it and perhaps use less. In other words, FPL's gas-fired plant produced almost 20% more power but with a third of the emissions as the coal-powered plant. Perkins called Matrixs work for the utility confidential. View MapReport Outage About FPL Company News Careers Environment Community Donate to Care To Share Rates and Your Bill In the Northeast corner of the state, a young, first-termRepublican mayor in Jacksonville was eager to solicit proposals to privatize city services none more enticing than the city's century-old municipal utility, JEA, one of the largest public electric, water and sewer utilities in the United States and a prize FPL had long sought. Please provide us with the Personal Identification Number (PIN) that you were given for a co-browse session with our representative. Yet great amounts of power come at a price. That proposal was forwarded to Silagy at FPL but never came to fruition. In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics, She was an ABC News producer. 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. And then apparently, somewhere along the way, Jeff and Joe got sideways, Silagy said. The companies that are doing the right thing still have those kinds of plants in their portfolio, specifically coal, but theyre working toward other alternatives, Hope said. This is a tired tactic that utilities have used to maintain their monopoly grip on electricity markets, said Will Giese, southeast regional director for the Solar Energy Industries Association. 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. Net metering is a popular program that gives people the right to choose the energy that works for them, provides benefits to all ratepayers and creates thousands of energy jobs across Florida.. Matrixs influence was felt on matters small and large, from Stoddards city of less than 12,000 to statewide fights over the Florida constitution. 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. 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. Florida Power & Light is pushing for it as Floridas biggest utility it has 5.5 million customers, about 65 percent of the state. Such a turn in the political tidecould be particularly dire for a regulated company like FPL, whose literal fortunes rise and fall on the decisions made by the Public Service Commission appointees of the governor who must sign off on any number of high-stakes operational and financial issues for Florida's private utilities, starting with electric rates. The West County Energy Centeruses three combined-cycle generating units thatburnnatural gas in a turbine much like a jet engine and in turn usesthat exhaust to make a second power source of steam. A local law firm and the company that owned the coal plant used the charity to pay the representative. The plan ultimately failed, and Stoddard was re-elected. FPL argued that it is more cost-effective to build a power plant than to invest in energy-efficiency programs because building codes and energy-efficiency standards in consumer products have improved. Meanwhile, groups aligned with the utility falsely tied Dunn to the Obama administrations efforts to reduce the use of coal. He has denied the allegations. Those dark-money groups were controlled by former Matrix employees, the records show. Florida Power & Light says the cost of subsidizing its 24,000 net-metering customers was $30 million in 2020 (about $1,250 per customer). 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. Going through those tens of thousands ofrecords, he said, alerted him to the extent of work Pitts performed without his knowledge. 2023 www.jacksonville.com. for Floodlight and Annie Martin for Orlando Sentinel, he CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. Miami's independent source of F lorida Power & Light is an investor owned company. Drop a line at hmorse@pbpost.com, call 561-820-4833 or follow her on Twitter @mannahhorse. 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. Pimentel will rejoin the company on Feb. 15 and work with Silagy until his departure. Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Utility Front Group Advertisement Tracker, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, Gas utilities push RNG and hydrogen to expand fossil fuel infrastructure, AGA uses millions of dollars from utility customers to promote a fossil fuel agenda, Internal documents detail how gas utilities greenwash RNG and hydrogen, Front groups and trade associations funded by gas utilities fight electrification policies, List of deceptive RNG and hydrogen projects, FirstEnergy CEO Steven Strah emailed about under the radar House Bill 6 provision that cost Ohio ratepayers millions of dollars. Bradley, who received Florida Power & Lights draft bill, is a first-term senator who is close to Senate leadership and chairs the Community Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Congressional Reapportionment. 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. Ive also.ccd Gera Peoples on this note. Perkins claims he only became aware of this work after he encountered what appeared to be a damaged hard drive in Pitts' former office and hired an IT team to extract the remains. 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. In May 2018, FPL's sprawling. Matrix consultants had little regard for the professional press. One of Matrixs oldest clients is Alabama Power, which employed Perkins personal consulting firm as early as 1999. 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. FPL has a long history of spending to campaign against Crist, spending up to $1 million against Crists bid for governor in 2006 after contributing $225,000 to Crists opponent in the Republican primary the largest donation FPL had ever made at the time. See How. Florida Power & Light is the largest electric utility in the state, serving more than 11 million people across vast swaths of Florida. In his Seeking Rents newsletter, publisher Jason Garcia called this decision: one of the most controversial decisions made in recent years by the PSC, a five-member panel comprised of four DeSantis appointees and one remaining holdover from former Gov. FPLs consultants used similar spoiler candidate tactics in the 2020 election cycle in three senate races throughout the state. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. FPL has echoed Pitts' allegations and called into question the veracity of some of the leaked records, although it has repeatedly refused to provide evidence the documents have been altered in any way. 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. Matrix grew so large that by 2015 it was operating several private aircraft to whisk Pitts and Perkins to client meetings. 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. Earlier this year, current PSC members, appointed by Gov. The tactics worked. Customers who are already using rooftop solar power before 2023 would be grandfathered in and keep their previous compensation rates for 10 years. Florida Power & Light has also invested millions into groups with untraceable, anonymous donors that launched attacks on state and local politicians. one of the largest contributors to legislative Florida political campaigns, would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. FPL deployed lobbyists to the capital, while Matrix hired private investigators to dig for dirt and had operatives funnel dark money and order attack ads. That cost is based on the avoided cost that the utility would have incurred if it were to install a comparable system. 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. The sex worker later testified the allegations were untrue, and that she had been paid by a Birmingham businessman to make them. There are reasons to prefer alternatives that are not fossil-fuel intensive. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. For example, in documents obtained by reporters, Silagy had emailed two of his vice presidents to make a state senator's "life a living hell" after proposing a pro-solar bill. All rights reserved. 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. Added Patino-Echeverri: The No. A dark money non-profit called "Grow United" is at the center of the scandal, with records showing direct communication with and invoices to FPL. Artiles pleaded not guilty. them with making Rodrguez's life "a living hell.". 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. The money was allegedly funneled through a network of tax-exempt nonprofits that obscured its origin. 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.. Reported contribution totals over $100k as of September 7, 2022, from the Florida Division of Elections Campaign Finance Database. 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. 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. 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. 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. "We contributeto organizations where we're aligned on what the ultimate goal is, and from the standpoint of having the Senate at the time, who was being led by (Senate President) Wilton Simpson, continue to be able to be led by Wilton Simpson,I was a fan of that," FPL CEO Eric Silagy, recently told me and several other journalists with the Times-Union, Orlando Sentinel and Floodlight in a wide-ranging interview in Jacksonville. The charity was a front established by a state representative. That month, FPL announced a planned purchase ofGulf Power, expanding its reach for the first time into the Florida Panhandle, and in the process snatching away a lucrative asset from regional rival Southern Company, which had owned Gulf since 1925. 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. 1 factor to reduce greenhouse gases is the transition from coal to gas. Under Bradleys bill, net-metering customers whose solar panels deliver energy back to the utility grid would no longer receive credits based on the retail cost of energy, but instead receive credits based on a lower wholesale cost. To date, no FPL employees have been charged with any crimes. 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. 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. Yet he acknowledged that the reports may have had an influence on the decision. Alissa Jean Schafer is a research and communications specialist at the Energy and Policy Institute. Over the course of DeSantis tenure, he used that veto power once to block an anti-rooftop solar bill written by FPL. Artiles has been connected to Florida utilities, including NextEra and its subsidiary Florida Power and Light (FPL), for years. This legislation allowed for Kelly to be replaced with a former utility lobbyist, Richard Gentry. The mayor, Lenny Curry, was ideologically predisposed to privatize a large government agency like JEA, and both the official and political arms of his office were surrounded by friends of FPL. 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. In May 2018, FPL's sprawling utility empire laid claim to both boundaries,reaching a pinnacle of power and influence rare even among the mega-corporations that call Florida home. According to FPL, the plant also has the best available and most advanced emission-control equipment.. The bill as it is written will decimate this industry.. Newman in his memo also took credit for a Miami Herald story about the allegation. As you may know, Gera is NextEra Energys Vice President and Chief Litigation Officer. Nate Monroe is a metro columnist whose work regularly appears every Thursday and Sunday. In 2020,the plant generated 19.7 million megawatt hours of energy and had an emissions rate of 371.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. Silagy's departure follows more than a year's worth of news investigations into his and FPL's connections to a "ghost candidate" scandal that saw unserious political candidates run in state senate races to siphon votes away from certain politicians. If this bill passes as it is, it has the potential to send Florida back to 2013, as if the advances of the last 10 years didnt happen, Vandenbroeck said. Rooftop solar, while critical to fighting climate change, is a threat to the traditional utility business model. 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