Mitch Perry
Debbie Dooley, president of one of the groups that spearheaded the movement to open up the solar power movement in Florida through a proposed constitutional amendment earlier this year, is blasting the report by the James Madison Institute released earlier on Wednesday.
That report said that passage of the amendment sponsored by Floridians for Solar Choice would cost ratepayers $1.1 billion.
“The Solar Choice amendment has no subsidies, carve-outs, fees or taxes,” says Dooley, president of the group Conservatives for Energy Freedom. “It will simply allow solar companies to enter into agreements to sell solar power to homes and businesses. Solar prices have dropped 61 percent in the last six years, and the Floridians for Solar Choice initiative will harness those price reductions and protect consumers from rising energy prices. Solar Choice will create high-paying local jobs in local communities and keep energy dollars here at home instead of sending tens of billions of dollars each year out of state for fuel. “
Contrary to the comments by James Taylor from the Heartland Institute, Dooley says the Solar Choice amendment is all about competition. “By unleashing free-market principles, consumers will win big. Competition will drive down the cost of energy. It’s a shame that groups like these develop positions based on financial contributions — not free market principles. Heartland also produced bogus reports to defend big tobacco and claimed smoking posed no health risks,” she says.
Dooley, one of the co-founders of the original national Tea Party back in 2009, has become a leading spokesperson for giving consumers the freedom to choose to buy their solar energy from smaller private companies and bypass the major utilities. Her advocacy for a similar proposal in Georgia reached fruition earlier this year in the state Legislature.
“The utility business model rewards building expensive power plants,” she says in a statement. “The more money the monopoly spends, the more money they make. Solar will eat into their profits. As long as this model and the current market barriers remain in place, the monopolies would rather keep building expensive power plants and spreading misinformation instead of doing what is in the best interest of their consumers.”
You can read Dooley’s entire statement here.
