FPL is bleeding its customers dry to protect its massive profits. After already increasing rates this past year by more than $1 billion—raising customer bills by roughly 18 percent—FPL has plans to for additional increases later this year. This monopoly utility, which is protected from free market competition, intends to hit its customers with additional hikes for fuel costs, its storm protection plan, and its costs related to Hurricane Ian. In fact, FPL has gamed the system so it can raise customer rates for practically anything, including higher interests rates, higher taxes on its profits, inflation, and even its own bad investments. In the base rate increase it had approved by the Public Service Commission (PSC) last year, the company has even shifted its lobbying costs onto the shoulders of its customers. And should FPL happen to overcharge you on your electric bill, the company isn’t even required to reimburse you for it! Because FPL is allowed by the legislature and the PSC to rig the system and avoid free market competition, the company is not reducing its heavy reliance on expensive natural gas, which has more than doubled in price over the past year, to generate electricity. Solar, nuclear, and wind all now provide cheaper electricity than natural gas. FPL has no incentive to follow the market and make smarter investments as long as it can pass the higher costs onto its captive base of customers. Please use this form to write your state lawmakers and let them know you want FPL to bear the cost of its bad decisions—including its stubborn over-reliance on natural gas—and for its...
Take Action Now! A wholesale slaughter of gray wolves is underway in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Wisconsin, with the number of wolf killings at the highest level since the early 1900s. Here are just some of the numbers: Last year, more than 495 wolves were killed in Idaho alone, with a staggering 4,500 killed in the state since 2011. The state’s governor recently signed legislation allowing hunters to kill 90 percent of Idaho’s remaining wolves. In a killing frenzy last year, hunters in Wisconsin killed 216 gray wolves in less than 60 hours. In recent months, hunters have shot and killed 23 of Yellowstone National Park’s renowned gray wolves as they roamed just outside the park boundary. In 2020, the most recent year with published numbers, the United State Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) killed 386 Wolves, including pups that were still in their den. Wolves were hastily delisted from the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) after minimal population targets were met. Those decisions did not take into account the longstanding cultural hostility toward wolves in some states, or the resulting policies that so rapidly and dramatically have wiped out decades of progress. Background Gray wolves, hunted virtually to extinction in the lower 48 states by the early 1900s, were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1974. Their recovery had been a great American conservation success story. However, in 2011, Congress ended wolf protections in the northern Rockies, and in 2020 the Trump administration stripped wolves of their critical ESA protections nationwide. Since then, much of the wolf population gains that were made during decades of ESA protection have...
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Oil and gas companies must agree to completely clean up, plug, and fully restore drilling sites once they finish with them prior to drilling on public land. Despite agreeing to this, oil and gas companies continue to abandon that obligation. Leaving taxpayers like you and me left on the hook for as much as $13.7 billion in future clean-up costs. Unfortunately, we are the ones left with the bill. Now is the time to enact proper safeguards that protect taxpayers and to finally make sure that oil and gas companies clean up after themselves. Unless the Biden administration and Congress step up to the plate, this issue will persist and cost you and me billions in clean-up...
The energy market is changing dramatically in ways that play to our nation’s strengths. However, taking full advantage of this new market reality means that we must make the right infrastructure investments. That means additional transmission and distribution infrastructure, smart grid technology, robust security and resilience measures, and policies that foster more U.S. production of key energy technology components. If we do not go all in and really grab this opportunity, our country could lose out big time. China has been investing tons of money and working overtime to corner the market on new energy technology and on the products that drive its expansion in the marketplace. The United States must meet these challenges head on, or else the lion’s share of this new economic driver, and the jobs that go with it, will be...
