Utilities Pour
Millions Into Solar Amendment
Clouded By Deceptive Intent
and
Opposed By
Environmentalists
FlaglerLive | November 1,
2016
Smoking mirrors.
(Kevin T. Houle)
Four major electric
utilities have surpassed the $20 million mark in combined contributions to
support a proposed constitutional amendment on solar energy.
Florida Power &
Light and Duke Energy last week dropped nearly $3 million into the “Consumers
for Smart Solar” initiative — Amendment 1 on the ballot — that has been opposed
by most major environmental groups in the state.
The latest money
came as ads from Consumers for Smart Solar proclaim that Amendment 1 is “solar
done right.” But backers of the initiative also have been grappling with a
controversy stemming from the release of a tape in which a policy director for
a Tallahassee-based think tank claimed to outline the utility industry’s
efforts to deceive voters.
The latest
contributions, $2 million on Oct. 24 from FPL and $999,998 last Tuesday from
Duke, brought to nearly $20.2 million the amount the state’s four largest
private utilities have spent on the amendment.
FPL has directed
$8.055 million to the amendment. Duke Energy is at $6.7 million. Tampa Electric
Co. has provided $3.2 million, and Pensacola-based Gulf Power is at $2.2
million.
Overall the
Tallahassee-based Consumers for Smart Solar has received $25.78 million, of
which $21.1 million has been spent. The group also has received $341,100
in-kind contributions.
By comparison, the
state’s most expensive constitutional amendment campaign, the 2004 trial
lawyer-backed Floridians for Patient Protection effort that pushed ballot
initiatives opposed by the Florida Medical Association, spent $28.65 million.
Sarah Bascom, a
spokeswoman for Consumers for Smart Solar, pointed to high advertising costs
during this year’s elections.
“Due to the
presidential election, Florida has remained a battleground state throughout the
2016 election cycle, making media costs more than we originally anticipated,”
Bascom said in a statement on Monday.
FPL President Eric
Silagy has said the Juno Beach-based company is backing the solar-energy
amendment to guarantee consumer protections that now could be usurped by local
and state government rule changes.
“I know it’s a
popular story line to say this is just the utilities that are trying to protect
a monopoly, but we don’t have a monopoly on rooftop solar, ground-mounted solar
or anything else,” Silagy said when asked about the amendment earlier this month
during a Florida Chamber of Commerce event in Orlando.
The Consumers for
Smart Solar amendment would enshrine in the Florida Constitution existing rules
regarding the use of solar energy by private property owners. The proposal also
includes a more-contentious provision, which states that people who haven’t installed
solar on their property “are not required to subsidize the costs of backup
power and electric grid access to those who do.”
Proponents say the
second provision provides consumer protections for people who don’t install
solar panels. Opponents, such as the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, say it
could result in “discriminatory charges” against rooftop solar users and limit the
desire of people to go solar.
Critics of the
amendment upped their efforts this month after the Miami Herald reported on an
audio tape in which James Madison Institute Vice President of Policy Sal Nuzzo
described how to use a “little bit of political jiu-jitsu” by promoting solar
to win support for desired changes in policy.
Nuzzo’s comments
came while speaking Oct. 2 at the “Energy/Environment Leadership Summit” in
Nashville, Tenn.
“It should now be
clear to all that Amendment 1 is a manipulatively designed tool for the utility
industry to continue to dominate the energy market in Florida,” Tory Perfetti,
chairman of Floridians for Solar Choice, an opposition group, said in a release
Monday. “There is no other reason to dedicate roughly $25 million in an attempt
to pass this anti-consumer, anti-solar, anti-free market amendment.”
The James Madison
Institute asserted that Nuzzo misspoke. Consumers for Smart Solar said the
James Madison Institute wasn’t involved in planning or drafting the proposal.
–Jim Turner,
News
Service of Florida
