"But FPL (Florida Power & Light) was adamant it wanted a bill that allowed it to control the renewables market. It hired 32 lobbyists, seeded the Senate president and House speaker’s political funds with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions, and donated more than $4 million to legislators, the governor, and the political parties in the last two years."...
Florida residents get lucky, dodge $375 million yearly electric rate increase to benefit electric company investors. Energy policy and temporary job programs are separate issues and should not be sold as a package. Florida P &L and 'green guilt.' (2008)
4/26/11, "Legislators again reject renewable energy plan," Miami Herald, Mary Ellen Klas
"Solar and biomass energy companies mourned the loss of a sure job development opportunity Tuesday as the state Senate’s budget chief put a spear through a bill to spur renewable energy in Florida.
“I’d pronounce that one dead,’’ said Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee after he indefinitely postponed a bill that would have allowed Florida’s largest electric companies to raise electric rates as much as
- $375 million a year for five years to develop alternative energy.
"I think it’s a terrible idea,’’ said Alexander, a citrus grower. "I can’t believe we’d ask Florida to pay $1 billion in additional assessments with zero regulatory oversight. I think that’s fundamentally not right.”
This is the third year the bill has been the priority of Florida Power & Light, and it is the third time the bill has died. The only thing new this year is that the Koch brothers-backed Americans For Prosperity joined in the chorus of opponents to argue against the bill.
The conservative tea party group opposed the bill because the rate increase was “a direct hit on the wallets of every Floridian,’’ but renewable energy companies disliked it because they saw it as a handout to the state’s electric monopolies. They tried but failed to get House and Senate leaders to expand the bill to allow generators of rooftop solar power or biomass plants to generate and sell energy alongside the utilities.
- More than 30 bills attempting to develop a commercial market for renewable energy in Florida were proposed this session, but
- only the FPL-backed bill got a hearing.
“What the Florida Legislature failed to realize is they have a readily available workforce – of construction workers, engineers and developers – that could be put to work in the solar industry if there were some incentives,’’ said Alex Rivera, president of Vanguard Energy Partners, a solar rooftop installer based in Stuart who does most of his business in New Jersey.
Unlike Florida, New Jersey offers individuals and businesses financial incentives to recover the full cost of installing rooftop solar panels over five years. Since 2001, 8,950 individuals and businesses have installed solar units and the market is booming, he said."...
- (Assuming this is so, New Jersey is broke and was put into some bad 'climate' related deals. Since they are broke, it is unlikely such deals will continue. ed.)
(continuing, Miami Herald): "Consumers save electricity, electric companies offset the need to construct new power plants, and the environment is spared emissions from fossil fuels, Rivera said. “Why would Florida not want to take advantage of one of the fastest growing industries in the nation?’’"...
- (If it is a "fastest growing industry" it's because politicians transfer massive amounts of 'no strings' taxpayer dollars to crony companies some of whom end up blowing all the money and leaving town. ed.)
(continuing, Miami Herald): "But FPL was adamant it wanted a bill that allowed it to control the renewables market. It hired 32 lobbyists, seeded the Senate president and House speaker’s political funds with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions, and donated more than $4 million to legislators, the governor, and the political parties in the last two years.
The FPL-backed proposal won the support of both the House and Senate energy committees. It would have given the state’s investor-owned electric companies the ability to raise rates to recover the cost of building solar power plants at a time when there is no demand for additional electricity generation. Progress Energy of Florida and Tampa Electric Co. said the effort was not a priority for them. FPL hoped to expand on their already growing solar energy market, and provide solar generation for the first green city on Babcock Ranch. FPL customers using 1,200 kilowatt hours a month would have paid an average of an additional $2.40 a month.
Alexander said he disliked the fact that the electric companies could build expensive solar plants, recover the cost and make a profit by producing little electricity.
- “You’re making a guaranteed profit without overloading the capacity on the grid,’’ he said. “It’s a pretty sweet deal.”
But it wasn’t a deal Alexander was willing to accept, so he indefinitely postponed the bill.
John Kimball, owner of Sun Electronics, a solar panel installation company in Miami, said that by failing to find a way to piggyback on the federal program that gives rebates of 30 percent of the cost of installing solar panels, Florida missed out on “creating a lot more jobs.’’
The cost of solar panels has dropped dramatically in the last few years, he said. But people respond to the financial incentives and now he sells most of his products outside of Florida and in other countries.
Rivera of Stuart agreed. “It’s too bad,’’ he said, “because we could have put a lot of people back to work.’’"
(Energy policy is entirely different from temporary jobs programs and should never be combined. See quote below. ed.)
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1/28/11, "Loss Of Solar Jobs Has Mass. Rethinking State Aid," NPR, Tovia Smith
"Harvard's Glaeser says it would be a big mistake to measure the state's energy policy
- by how it works as a jobs program.
"We need good energy policy," he says. "But the point of that policy should not be to maximize the number of employees. If we try to do energy and jobs together, I think we get
- neither a good energy program nor a good jobs program."...
"He says government should not be in the business of playing venture capitalist in the first place."...
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1/14/11, "Massachusetts solar plant to close after 2 years," American Thinker, Ethel C. Fenig
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3/27/11, "North Jersey towns object to solar panels," Bergen Record, O'Neill and Superville
"PSE&G customers are billed 10 cents a month to help fund the solar panel project, which also receives federal tax credits and state energy credits earned by producing solar power."...
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4/8/11, "Global Warming Alarmism's Long March through State and Local Institutions," American Thinker, Peter Wilson
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1/22/11, "What hath the greenies wrought?" American Thinker, Ed Lasky
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7/30/2008, "Green Guilt," Capital Research Center, E. Heidenreich
"On Tuesday, state regulators shut down the Sunshine Energy Program which allowed Florida Power & Light ratepayers to contribute to the utility’s investments in renewable energy. Regulators found that, at best, 24% of the $9.75 each customer voluntarily added to his or her bill was actually invested in renewable energy. Commissioner Nathan Skop concludes that about $9 MILLION went “into a black hole where there is no transparency."...
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(I lived in Central Florida for a few years recently and observed electric companies already charge inflated prices. Many people in Florida are poor and can't afford the bills which can easily cost more than a month's rent. ed.)
via Tom Nelson
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