Mitch Perry
In a much anticipating hearing today, the Florida Public Service Commission today slashed energy efficiency goals for Duke Energy, TECO, Gulf Energy & Florida Power & Light on a 3-2 vote. They also voted to allow a pilot program for solar power to expire at the end next year, but said they intend to host a workshop in 2015 on finding other ways to make solar power more accessible for Floridians.
Collectively, the four investor-owned utilities were requesting a cut of more than 90 percent from energy efficiency requirements set in place by the PSC back in 2009. The rollbacks approved today range from an 87-99 percent reduction in customer energy savings, according to the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), which called the reductions “stunning.”
PSC staffer Tom Ballinger told board members that the primary reasons why the utilities have been losing money over the past few years is that there has been less growth in energy consumption, attributing the lack of energy usage to the economy or just that people are saving more electricity on their own accord. “We’re making great strides as a nation,” he said of such reductions in consumption. He also said that as the cost of fuel drops, so does generation, which he said had dropped more than 50 percent since 2009. “It’s not that conservation isn’t out there. It’s just not so cost effective,” he said.
Board members Lisa Edgar and Julie Brown both expressed some dismay at staff’s recommendations, however.
“I’ve struggled with this item,” Brown said. “We have conflicting directives in the statute. We’re supposed to encourage conservativion, but (also) look at costs.” She said Floridians feel that conservation is free, and it should be. “But under FEECA it comes at a cost.” FEECA stands for Florida Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act. “I am not criticizing it, but it’s not the direction I want to go in,” added Edgar about the PSC staff’s recommendations. She said she was uncomfortable about going to the reduced goals.
But the reduced goals are exactly what the agency ultimately voted for.
“The historic rollbacks in conservation goals approved today by the Florida PSC are bad news for customers – especially those on lower incomes,” SACE said in a press release. “During the proceeding, SACE showed that higher levels of energy efficiency cost less than building new, more costly power plants. Instead of siding with customers, the PSC sided with monopoly utility shareholders, once again, by setting meager goals that promote the construction of new power plants – which earn the companies a hefty profit, while leaving fewer opportunities for customers to lower energy use and save money on bills.”
The other interested environmental group, the Sierra Club, also criticized the reductions in energy efficiency. “Today, the PSC failed Florida families by caving to big polluters,” said Kelly Martin, Sierra Club Senior Florida Representative. “Florida already ranks in the bottom half of the nation for energy efficiency, and now will only fall further behind, costing families and businesses in the process.”
The new goals are set for ten years with a scheduled review in five. Utilities will be asked to submit their plans for meeting the new goals early next year.
Regarding the solar pilot program, PSC staffer Diana Marr laid out the arguments about why they recommended that the program should expire at the end of 2015: She said they had “failed the cost effectiveness test”; that solar photovoltaic (PV) incentives resulted in a large subsidy to ratepayers who utilized the program; that the cost to install solar PV had been decreasing since 2011; that 1,200 Duke, TECO and FP&L customers had chosen to install solar without any incentives at all in recent years; and that recent interest in solar water heating had been limited.
PSC board member Ronald Brise strongly agreed with staff’s recommendation, saying that the average customer who took advantage of the solar PV program had an income of over $100,000, and thus the “swath of our community could not benefit from these programs.” However he also said that should be a space of solar in the public utility’s energy portfolio.
Picking up on that, PSC member Julie Brown said that people in Florida are clearly interested in solar power. Board member Lisa Edgar said the state has many blessings – geographical, environmental and cultural – but having a lot of renewable energy supply is not one of them. “Solar absolutely needs to be a part of our fuel generation portfolio,” she insisted, calling for efforts to make solar generation be more cost effective for ratepayers.
That was the general consensus around the dais, as the board agreed to allow the pilot program to terminate on December 31,2015. But they intend to hold a workshop sometime next year to address how more solar power can exist in Florida.
There was some good news for Duke Energy customers. The bill for an average residential Duke customer is expected to go down by about 16 cents a month to $125.13. That stems from the PSC ordering Duke to refund $54 million that it collected from ratepayers to pay for a failed nuclear plant.
