Al Gore Is Overweight
So there’s really no need for “green” energy.
The Miami Herald reports that the Florida Public Service Commission isn’t buying: State shuts down FPL energy program
State regulators Tuesday terminated a Florida Power & Light voluntary green energy program because three-fourths of the money customers were donating went to marketing and administrative costs.
By a unanimous vote, the Public Service Commission ended FPL’s Sunshine Energy Program in which 39,000 customers have voluntarily added $9.75 to their monthly electric bill so that FPL could purchase renewable energy.
FPL in turn contracted with a Texas company, Green Mountain Energy, to carry out the program. PSC staff have been trying for months to find out where the money went, but all it could learn was that 24 percent was going to purchase renewable energy.
Commissioner Nathan Skop, who had once worked for an FPL sister company promoting renewables, said about $9 million in customers’ money had gone “into a black hole where there is no transparency. . . . Clearly this is not right.”
Skop said the program was “a lot of marketing hype but very little of substance.”
I think that 76% profit is a bit much, even for FPL. When even the PSC notices there’s a problem, things are really out of whack. FPL should have stayed with 50% like everyone else.
2 comments
Sounds like any other no-bid contract to me.
The Florida power companies have more cons running at any particular time than the Mafia. Another favorite is uniform billing – i.e. you get the same amount billed every month. This sounds like a reasonable way of dealing with a recurring bill except:
There is an additional charge for the “service”, it isn’t simply the average monthly bill from the previous year; and
It reduces the power company’s costs because the meter is not read monthly.
Another scam is “whole house surge protection”, which is basically an 8-foot copper plated grounding stake that should already be in place with a heavier gauge of grounding strap, and a heavier version of the same surge circuit used in most power strips these days. For this “service” they get an installation fee and a monthly charge.
Everyone in the energy business is an Enron wannabe.