Editor’s Note:  The following guest commentary by Florida Power & Light President Eric Silagy was published Monday, August 18 in the Gainesville Sun. While challenging the Sun’s reservations about the need for an additional natural gas pipeline in Florida, Silagy could not resist taking a few swipes at the Gainesville Regional Utility Authority.

Interestingly, Silagy claimed Florida Power & Light’s rates for 1000 kWh or residential power are 25 percent below the national average.  If Silagy’s claim is true, what that means, of course, is that Vero Electric’s rates are at or close to the national average.  Yet, Silagy and he team of attack dogs have been hard at work attempting to convince the customers of Vero Electric the City’s utility is a model of inefficiently.

Silagy told an investor group last year one of FPL’s opportunities for growth is through the acquisition of municipal utilities.  Could it be that after running into a brick wall in Vero Beach, FPL will be shifting its acquisition efforts to Gainesville?

Below is Silagy’s guest commentary, as well as the Gainesville Sun’s editorial:

New gas pipeline is vital for state

By Eric Silagy/Special to The Sun

Published: Monday, August 18, 2014 at 6:01 a.m.

The Sun’s July 30 editorial about the important effort to build a new natural gas pipeline system into Florida was both misinformed and misleading.

Natural gas is vital to the reliability and affordability of electricity in our state. Florida relies more on natural gas to generate electricity than any U.S. state other than Texas. However, unlike Texas, we aren’t a major gas producer, and we currently only have two major pipeline systems to transport gas to the peninsula – both of which are effectively at full capacity.

Meanwhile, Florida’s economy continues to grow.

To meet the growing need for electricity, Florida must have additional access to natural gas. At Florida Power & Light, we have avoided the need for 14 medium power plants through cost-effective energy-efficiency, and we’re proud to have built the state’s first large-scale solar energy centers. But the reality is that clean, affordable natural gas is fundamental to powering Florida’s economy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

As the state’s largest electric provider, FPL took a lead role in developing initial plans and attracting the multi-billion-dollar private investment necessary to build a third underground natural gas pipeline system to serve the needs of the entire state. Importantly, this pipeline will not only provide Florida with a reliable source of energy, it will provide many utilities, like Gainesville’s, with affordable, clean options to meet their future energy needs.

The new pipeline system has many other benefits as well, such as reducing our reliance on offshore sources that are subject to interruptions due to hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Like a highway interchange connects intersecting roads, the new system will include a connection to the existing natural gas pipelines in Central Florida, effectively increasing our state’s energy security by introducing important flexibility in the event that the supply of one of the lines is interrupted.

We have a responsibility to continually plan for the future. We invest billions of dollars into Florida’s infrastructure every year so we can continue delivering cleaner, more affordable electricity to millions of Floridians around the clock through all kinds of weather. We’ve expanded our use of zero-emissions nuclear and solar power, and we’ve replaced old plants with fuel-efficient energy centers that run on U.S.-produced natural gas, reducing our use of foreign oil by 99 percent.

By investing in natural gas, we have driven down our emissions rate year after year while also saving our customers on their electric bills. Since 2001, our investments in cleaner, more efficient, natural gas power have prevented more than 60 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and saved our customers more than $6.8 billion on fuel. Our customers pay lower electric rates than they did five years ago while the power they receive is far cleaner. No, that’s not a typo. Rates for FPL customers are actually down about 7 percent compared with five years ago.

Our typical, 1,000-kWh bill has been the lowest in Florida for five years running, and it continues to be approximately 25 percent lower than the U.S. average. This is due in no small part to a highly efficient system that ranks us among the cleanest utilities in the country.

Unfortunately, in the Gainesville area, people know all too well the impact of ill-planned power resources and high electricity rates. The city-owned utility’s biomass plant has not been the economic and environmental boon that The Sun believed it would be. Today, a residential 1,000-kWh/month Gainesville utility customer pays over 40 percent more than an FPL customer – that adds up to almost $500 more in electricity costs for a typical household.

It’s even worse for small businesses, many of which are still trying to recover from the recession. For a 1,500-kWh/month commercial user, Gainesville charges more than 60 percent higher rates than FPL – that’s more than $1,100 a year in extra costs.

The city also faces a major emissions problem. According to 2012 data, the city utility’s carbon dioxide emissions rate is more than 50 percent higher than the statewide average and more than 125 percent higher than FPL’s. This is despite the city’s conservation efforts and well-publicized solar feed-in tariff. And the new biomass plant, despite burning a renewable fuel, will still produce significant emissions.

We sympathize with Gainesville Regional Utilities. Every electric provider faces different challenges, and we don’t claim to have all the answers. Energy is a complex issue and an essential need. We take our responsibility to our customers and state very seriously, regardless of politics, and in the future, we hope that The Sun will take the time to understand all of the facts before editorializing.

Eric Silagy is president and CEO of Florida Power & Light Company.

Gainesville Sun Editorial: A pipeline’s purpose

Published July 30, 2014

As plans progress to put a natural gas pipeline through North Central Florida, there are a number of questions that must be answered about the project but one that stands out.

Does the state really need a new pipeline to supply more power plants?

The need appears to be more about the profits of major energy providers than the interests of the public. At recent hearings before the Florida Public Service Commission, big utilities such as Duke Energy and Florida Power & Light pushed to gut programs that promote energy conservation and solar. They’d rather just keep building power plants.

The reason is simple: Power plants make them money and reduced electric use costs them money. For their customers, however, the reverse is true.

But the public wasn’t able to make that case to the ironically named Public Service Commission, which refused to allow public comment at the hearings.

It’s no surprise, then, that the commission has given its blessing to the natural gas pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must now decide whether the pipeline should be built and what route it should take.

Sabal Trail Transmission, a joint venture of the owner of Florida Power & Light and Houston-based Spectra Energy, is proposing to build the nearly 500-mile, 36-inch pipeline. Property owners who don’t reach agreement with the company would have the land seized by eminent domain.

Sabal Trail spokeswoman Andrea Grover said there are agreements in place to provide the gas to Florida Power and Duke Energy.

“If there wasn’t a need for us to deliver to them, there wouldn’t be a pipeline,” she told The Sun’s editorial board recently.

Yet Duke Energy said this month that it plans to build a natural-gas plant in Citrus County regardless of whether the pipeline is approved. The utility also plans to hike customer bills to pay for the plant.

In April, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency questioned the need for more electrical generation. In a letter about the pipeline, the EPA suggested that Florida Power could instead boost conservation and the use of alternative energy sources, noting that electricity sales peaked in 2007. The EPA also suggested the pipeline might pose environmental and safety hazards.

Natural gas is certainly a better option than coal in terms of the emissions that contribute to climate change. But Atlanta-based law firm GreenLaw filed objections this month to the pipeline over concerns it would be a major emitter of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds.

For area residents, a major worry is the pipeline’s path near the region’s springs. A spill could pollute the aquifer that feeds those springs and supplies our drinking water. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must make Sabal Trail address these issues before considering approval of the pipeline.

Gov. Rick Scott has questions of his own to answer about the pipeline. Broward Bulldog reported recently that Scott owned a stake in Spectra Energy in his blind trust. Scott also had a Florida Power & Light executive who pitched the pipeline on his transition team, signed into law two bills designed to speed up pipeline permitting, and appointed the Public Service Commission members who approved it.

But the overarching question is whether the state’s big utilities really need more power plants.

If not, the pipeline isn’t worth the risk – especially when conservation and alternative energy sources could save customers and the environment.