Drop a line athmorse@pbpost.com, call 561-820-4833 or follow her on Twitter@mannahhorse. The last year of Silagy's leadership was marked by high natural gas prices; the global supply chain crisis; two disastrous hurricanes; and a barrage of damning media reports. FPL | Contact Us We're here to help Please log in so we can help you faster. Dunn lost his 2014 re-election campaign by a 19-point margin to Chip Beeker, a catfish farmer who is still in office. 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. The complaint implicated Florida Power & Light in election law violations because of alleged attempts to obscure the source of the political donations. 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. President and CEO of Florida Power & Light Eric Silagy speaks to the media after FPL imploded its last Florida . 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. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy Retires in Wake of Matrix Consultant Scandal Alex DeLuca January 25, 2023 11:52AM FPL CEO Eric Silagy (left) speaks with Gov. It was based on our discussion, and it was one that I could support as a starting point, she recalled. Ive also.ccd Gera Peoples on this note. Please provide us with the Personal Identification Number (PIN) that you were given for a co-browse session with our representative. Indeed, the company's future looked bright. Namely,how "clean" can, or should, an energy system be to make inroads in tacklingclimate change as the urgency heightens? Two days later, Florida Division of Elections records show, Florida Power & Lights parent company, NextEra Energy, gave $10,000 to Bradleys political committee, Women Building the Future. And in 2020, Matrix even harnessed the power of the press for itself, when its employees acquired control of The Capitolist, a Tallahassee-based political news site which it used for favorable coverage, leaked records show. 3:12. FPL emerged from that episode empty handed, a particularly punishing outcome in the world of investor-owned utilities, which are locked in a rat race to grow bigger or die. While the report contemplates the impact of fracking and transporting natural gas, it is not quantified. What we dont think about is gas has to be brought up from the earth. 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.. We need to have the debate, he said. Silagy, CEO since 2014, will depart the company in April. But in the years that followed, FPL would loosen the grip of its dependence on oil-powered plants, including demolishing a 1960s-era Riviera Beach oil plant, with its memorable red-and-white smokestacks, and rebuilding it in 2014 as a natural gas plant. In Florida, FPL and Matrix demonstrated how a utility and its consultants can work in tandem to resist clean energy reforms. The sites publisher, Brian Burgess, a former top spokesperson for past Florida governor Rick Scott, also suggested in emails that Matrix should lure prominent Florida journalists to a new site or buy local papers owned by media giant Gannett Company and then lay off most of the clown reporters to inject content into publications without anyone knowing who was pulling the strings. 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. 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. "We're not making a connection," said John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy. Its CEO, Mark Crosswhite, stepped down in December. Im not afraid if the conclusion is its not the time to do this. ", FPL lauds its reliability and maintains it has the lowest electricity rates in the country. Before the prospect of JEA had even been formally proposed, Matrix employees were planting seeds intended to underminepublic confidence in the Jacksonville agency, potentially as early as 2017. He is suing Pitts in Alabama for fraud and conspiracy. That statement was made before additional rounds of damaging disclosures prompted the investigation by the outside law firm. Another factor is promoting energy efficiency at the consumer level, Shober said. 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.". Duke has 2 million customers, followed by TECO with 800,000 . 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. They work off intimidating. When the small south Florida citys mayor helped pass an ordinance in 2017 mandating rooftop solar panels on new construction, a network of 10 FPL-aligned operatives mobilized to ensure his ouster. Energy poles by Florida Power and Light from Turkey Point nuclear generating station in Miami, 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 . [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. Records obtained by Floodlight and the Orlando Sentinel show that Matrix consulted for FPL, as well as another Florida company, Gulf Power, and Alabama Power. [] NextAmid Connections to Ongoing Election Scandals, NextEra Pours Millions into Floridas 2022 []. The consultants pitched and supported tactics designed toembarrassindividualreporters who they believed had crossed their client's interests. FPL has acknowledged it received the idea but insists the company immediately rejected it. Many of the documents have since been verified by additional reporting, public records or Perkins himself. Electricity companies like Florida Power & Light make money off of the things they build: mainly large power plants and the power lines that bring that energy to customers. 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. 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. In seeking ways to reduce carbon dioxide pollution particularly to address federal emissions goals that aim to stem the effects of climate change its natural to look at the high-emitting plants to find opportunities for efficiencies, said Dalia Patino-Echeverri, an associate professor at Duke Universitys Nicholas School of the Environment, who studies public policy design for energy systems. F lorida Power & Light is an investor owned company. Matrix employees spent heavily on political advertisements for a candidate with the same last name as Rodrguez, who split the vote. 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. 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. 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. Our programs are designed to make paying your bill simple and manageable. 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. 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. Money from the company also covertly secured favorable media coverage, investigations by the Orlando Sentinel, the Miami Herald, the Guardian, NPR, and Floodlight found. 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. 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. 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