Prov Residents and Biz Are Getting a New Electricity Co, Tied to Enviro & Political Controversies
Thursday, March 02, 2023
The company the City of Providence contracted to is tied to numerous regulatory violations and GOP political dirty dealing. PHOTO: File
If you have Rhode Island Energy, you will have the new city program starting in May.
The city selected NextEra Energy to supply the electricity for the next five years -- the Florida energy conglomerate has been the focus of a range of controversies and regulatory actions.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe selection of NextEra was completed by former Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza's administration. The ordinance creating the new energy structure was adopted by the Providence City Council. Six other Rhode Island communities are part of this initiative led by Providence.
On Wednesday, during a conference call between GoLocal and Providence officials Kevin Proft, Interim Director of Sustainability, and Patricia Socarras, Smiley’s Director of Communications, the two were unaware of the controversies around NextEra and Florida Power and Light, which NextEra owns, nor the company's track record.
Socarras said she thought NextEra was based in Florida.
In addition, the Smiley staffers were unaware the company had been fined tens of millions of dollars for environmental, labor, and health violations by federal and state agencies.
According to the database ViolationTracker.com, Florida Power & Light/NextEra has been fined in excess of $30 million.
But more recently, the energy company has been alleged to have committed election violations and has poured tens of millions in support of GOP candidates in an effort to block environmental legislation, specifically efforts to promote renewables.
Soccarras said, "We take compliance seriously, and I don't think it's fair to say that a company [that] has had fines, that they are necessarily a bad actor."
Florida Power & Light — Big Supporter of GOP and DeSantis
Florida Power & Light has poured about $20 million in political donations from the election cycle in 2018 to this past 2022 election — the vast majority of that money went to the GOP, according to the Energy & Policy Institute.
"In fact, no other elected official in Florida did more to help Florida Power & Light land its $5 billion rate increase than DeSantis — who is now running for re-election and who, campaign-finance records show, has raised more than $3 million from FPL and a network of big-business front groups and dark-money nonprofits that the company helps to fund.”
DeSantis is expected to run for the Republican nomination for President in 2024.
Dark Money and Efforts Remove Pro-Environment Legislators
In July 2022, the Guardian published a major expose´ titled, “Leaked: US power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and fight clean energy.”
The investigation uncovered a range of damning communications:
"The CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) profits. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants – bypassing FPL and its monopoly on electricity.
“I want you to make his life a living hell … seriously,” FPL’s CEO Eric Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of his vice-presidents about state Senator José Javier Rodríguez, who proposed the legislation.
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.
Rodríguez was ousted from office in the next election. Matrix employees spent heavily on political advertisements for a candidate with the same last name as Rodríguez, who split the vote. That candidate later admitted he was bribed to run.
Hundreds of pages of internal documents – which are only coming to light now because Matrix’s founders are locked in an epic feud – detail the firm’s secret work to help power companies like FPL protect their profits and fight the transition to cleaner forms of energy.
As a result of that report and other investigations, Silagy and the company have been tied to allegations of campaign finance violations, media manipulation, and the surveillance of critical journalists. Silagy, CEO since 2014, will depart the company in April.
Killing 150 Bald and Golden Eagles
Even the U.S. Department of Justice has taken recent enforcement actions against the company. In April of 2022, ESI Energy Inc. (ESI) was sentenced in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), announced Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and U.S. Attorney L. Robert Murray for the District of Wyoming.
ESI is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources LLC, which in turn is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NextEra Energy Inc. ESI owns other companies, many of which operate wind energy generation facilities throughout the United States, including in Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, North Dakota and Michigan, as well as other states.
ESI pled guilty to three counts of violating the MBTA, each based on the documented deaths of golden eagles due to blunt force trauma from being struck by a wind turbine blade at a particular facility in Wyoming or New Mexico, where ESI had not applied for the necessary permits. ESI further acknowledged that at least 150 bald and golden eagles have died in total since 2012, across 50 of its 154 wind energy facilities. 136 of those deaths have been affirmatively determined to be attributable to the eagle being struck by a wind turbine blade.
Providence Residents and Businesses Are Not Alone
“All Providence residential and business electricity customers currently using Rhode Island Energy’s Last Resort Service will be automatically enrolled in the Providence Community Electricity Program’s standard electricity option as of their May 2023 meter read date. The electricity rates will be fixed over an initial six-month period from May 2023 through November 2023,” said the Smiley administration.
The electricity rates offered will only be fixed over an initial six-month period from May 2023 through November 2023.
According to the city, Providence is part of a group of seven municipalities launching the state’s first municipal aggregation programs, including Barrington, Central Falls, Narragansett, Newport, Portsmouth, and South Kingstown.
"Each community is launching their own distinct program in May 2023, but by combining their buying power to procure a common electricity supplier, Next Era Energy Services, the communities were able to secure an electricity supply with a lower rate and more renewable energy than RI Energy’s supply option," according to the announcement from the Smiley administration.
The company did not respond to phone calls or email requests for comment.
