Mediaboss Marketing

Published on July 16th, 2017 | by Guest Contributor

July 16th, 2017 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on Nexus Media. By Molly Taft

Imagine youre packing for a Florida vacation. A swimsuit, shades and a few gallons of sunscreen are probably the first things to go in your bag. If youre driving south from Georgia to Disney World, youll see a big, blue sign when you hit the state line: Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State.

Apparently, not everyone in Florida has gotten the memo.

The states chief power regulator, Art Graham, told an audience at a 2014hearingon solar power, I think the whole Sunshine State is just a license plate slogan. Grahams not alone. For years, state lawmakers havesaid intermittent cloud cover would make solar unworkable in Florida.

And yet, Florida generatesless solar energythan several far cloudier states, including Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. When it comes to solar, policy is key. And there, Florida is sorely lacking.

Solar resources available across the United States. Florida ranks among the sunniest states. Source: NREL

Floridas big electric utilities are the major sunblock. The four largest investor-owned utilitiesFlorida Power and Light, Gulf Power Electric, Tampa Electric Company and Duke Energysupply power to around75 percentof Florida ratepayers.

On your drive to Disney World, you might peer out your car window at the Mickey Mouse-shaped solar farm near Epcot. You would guess the array belongs to Disney, but you would be wrong. Disney merely owns the land under the installation. Duke Energy owns and operates the array, and sells the power it generates to the resort.

Effectively, four companies control Floridas power market, dictating how and at what price residents get their energy. Floridians generally dont get to choose which power provider they use to run their homes.

Its like saying only one person gets to sell you coffee for the rest of your life all across the state of Florida, said Tory Perfetti, chairman of the advocacy groupFloridians for Solar Choice. I dont drink coffee, but I think that would be kind of crummy.

Utilities in Florida also earn an unusually high return on power. They want to supply as much electricity as possible to consumers. Rooftop solar threatens their bottom line. [Utilities] dont want to sell less energy any more than McDonalds wants to sell fewer hamburgers, said Susan Glickman, Director of theSouthern Alliance for Clean Energy. Thats just their business model.

Clean energy advocates say Florida utilities wield outsized influence on state politics. Utilities rank among the largest campaign donors in Florida politics. A 2014reportfrom watchdog groupIntegrity Floridafound that the states four utilities spent more than $12 million on lobbying between 2007 and 2013, registering at least one lobbyist for every two legislators each year during that period.

Notably, its Florida ratepayers who are footing the bill for utility lobbying efforts. Everybody lobbies from every side of the aisle, said Perfetti. But utilities are using the money they earn from a noncompetitive market to lobby to keep that market noncompetitive.

This table shows how much money Floridas largest utilities spent lobbying the state legislature between 2007 and 2013. Source: Integrity Florida

This table shows how much money Floridas largest utilities spent lobbying the state legislature between 2007 and 2013. Source: Integrity Florida

Utilities also enjoy an unusually close relationship with the government. The Integrity Florida report details a revolving door between power companies and regulators. And it finds that the Public Service Commission, including regulators like Graham, routinely side with utilities over consumers.

For this reason, solar was practically untouchable in Florida politics until recently. If you were a politician trying to open up solar through the free market you were going to have every door shut in your face legislatively, said Perfetti. If you were going to take a stand at all, you were going to have a pretty tough time.

But the tide is beginning to shift. Utilities now face opposition from an unlikely source. In the spring of 2014, Perfetti and Debbie Dooley recruited Tea Party activists and influential Florida conservatives to join a new pro-solar advocacy group,Floridians for Solar Choice.

Dooley and Perfetti united libertarians and pro-business trade groups with environmental organizations. Last year, they pushed toamend the state constitutionto allow Floridians to sell solar power to their neighbors.

Utilities put forward a competingamendment, known as Amendment 1, that could be used to raise fees on rooftop solar owners and block small solar farms from selling their power to consumers. The companies created an advocacy group, Consumers for Smart Solar, withfundingfrom organizations connected to the Koch Brothers.

Consumers for Smart Solar vastlyoutspentFloridians for Solar Choice, and succeeded in making Amendment 1 the only solar-related option on the November ballot. Its official title, Rights of Electricity Consumers Regarding Solar Energy Choice, led many to believe it would expand access to solar energy. In reality, it would strengthen utilities ironclad grip on the power grid. Those who signed the petition to put Amendment 1 on the ballot later told theMiami Heraldthey felt scammed.

This chart shows which utility and fossil fuel groups funded Consumers for Smart Solar. Source: Energy and Policy Institute

While Floridians for Solar Choice failed to gathered enough signature to get their measure on the ballot, they nonetheless managed to demonstrate the broad support for solar. The success of that effort, which created such noise and attention, put pressure and pushed the legislators towards pro-solar policies, Glickman said.

In response to these efforts, lawmakers created a ballot initiative that wouldamend the state constitutionto waive property taxes on solar panels installed on homes and businesses. Amendment 4, as it was known, passed with73 percentof the vote in August 2016.

Amendment 1 would meet a different fate come November. The measure earned national coverage,most of it critical, and a series of gaffes plagued the campaign in its final weeks. A utility-friendly policy director was caught on tape praising the amendments deceptive language as political jiu-jitsu, while the Florida firefighter union publiclywithdrew its supportfor the amendment days before the vote.

We are engaged in a David vs. Goliath battle, a retired fire captain wrote in a letter to the union chief, and having a phony firefighter on TV ads hoodwinking the public that they should support this fraud is so repulsive to me, words do not suffice.

Florida ultimately rejected the measure at the ballot box. Talk about sending a message, laughed Glickman.

Perfetti said the deceptive tactics of the anti-solar coalition were a wake-up call for voters. I would have people call me up who dont pay attention to normal politics, and they knew what was going on. They knew the utility industry was trying to fix and rig the game for their own profit, said Perfetti. Youre talking about an enshrined industry that had total dominance in a state, that was trying to pass an amendment to give them more dominance.

Despite their resounding defeat at the ballot box, utilities have continued to undermine solar. The legislature recently authored a bill implementing Amendment 4. In the first draft, Rep. Ray Rodrigues (R) snuck in language written by Florida Power and Light. The added text would have saddled solar companies with new financial disclosure requirements, but theMiami Heraldexposedthe move, and legislators cut the offending language from the final version of the bill.

Whats next for solar in Florida? Advocates dont know, but one thing is certain. Utilities wont back down when it comes to blocking the sun. Im sure there will be battles coming up in the future that we cant even predict yet, said Perfetti. We are not going anywhere.

Reprinted with permission.

Check out our new 93-page EV report, based on over 2,000 surveys collected from EV drivers in 49 of 50 US states, 26 European countries, and 9 Canadian provinces.

Tags: Florida, Florida solar, tea party

Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. 😀

See more here:
Florida Utilities Try To Stymie Rooftop Solar, While Tea Party Conservatives Try To Save It - CleanTechnica