TALLAHASSEE, FLA—Today, in the Florida Supreme Court, the Sierra Club appealed the Public Service Commission’s decision to force FPL customers to pay for the utility’s aggressive expansion of fracked gas infrastructure, despite failing to prove it’s necessary.
The PSC last year approved FPL’s request for $800 million in construction costs to replace power plants that supplied South Florida’s peak demand. By Florida law, FPL was supposed to present the PSC—and the public—with substantial evidence to prove these plants were needed and were the least cost option before building them or asking to raise customers' rates to cover the costs.
But FPL never did this. The company never obtained pre-construction approval for the new gas plants, even though FPL itself has admitted that solar can supply peak demand cost-effectively.
Not only did FPL fail to analyze alternatives to sinking ratepayers’ money into these gas plants, but the PSC failed to require them to do so—despite knowing the peakers FPL was building could be economically obsolete and superseded by alternate resources as early as 2020.
In the appeal, Sierra Club asks the court to reverse the PSC’s approval of the project because it violates the “prudent investment requirement” stated in the law, and because it was not supported by competent substantial evidence. Sierra Club also asks that the PSC specify what amount of FPL’s last rate increase for customers was attributable to the gas plants project and is now precluded from recovery, and asks that the PSC allow only the recovery of FPL’s expenses that can actually be determined as prudent.
In response to today’s filing, Susannah Randolph, senior representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in Florida, released the following statement:
“Florida already has the worst gas over-reliance problem in the country, yet nearly 70 percent of FPL’s electric generation relies on gas, while only about 1 percent comes from cheap, clean solar power. Making Floridians pay more of their hard-earned money for fracked gas that we don’t need adds insult to injury.
“The PSC is supposed to make sure our communities get services ‘in a safe, reasonable, and reliable manner,’ and should therefore require FPL to maximize safe, cheap renewable energy resources that would protect Florida’s environment and also shield our families and businesses from the volatile fossil fuels market.”
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About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 3 million members and supporters nationwide. In addition to creating opportunities for people of all ages, levels and locations to have meaningful outdoor experiences, the Sierra Club works to safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and litigation. For more information, visit http://www.sierraclub.org.