> Panhandle’s anger over FPL may have helped spur DeSantis veto of anti-solar bill

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis surprised many in Florida’s environmental community when he vetoed Florida Power & Light’s priority bill that was intended to reduce rooftop solar expansion in Florida.

Solar advocates said it was a signal the governor had put “energy freedom ahead of monopoly utility profit margins.” But in conservative northwest Florida, residents say they deserve some of the credit, as their outrage at FPL and its handling of winter price hikes became a catalyst in the bill’s demise.

“We were very happy that the governor was supportive of our request to veto the net metering (bill),” said Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson at his weekly news conference on May 2. He was referring to HB 741, the legislation that would have scaled back how much utility companies must pay to buy excess power from rooftop solar users.
Related: DeSantis vetoes net metering bill opposed by rooftop solar proponents

For the past four months, the reliably Republican Florida Panhandle community has been doing something very uncharacteristic for conservative voters: It has been revolting against Florida’s largest electric utility. And, in a gesture that cuts to the core of the utility giant’s expansion goals, some Pensacola officials want to establish their own municipally run utility.

Three years ago, FPL bought the homegrown electric utility Gulf Power Co. In January, when a rate increase took effect along with rising fuel prices as part of a four-year deal, northwest Florida faced sticker shock.

FPL said that average Gulf Power residential customers who use 1,000 kilowatt hours a month would see their electric bills go from $129.24 to $137.49 in January, but hundreds of people complained on a social media site that the average was much higher. Business owners complained of having bills inexplicably triple. As temperatures dipped below freezing, Panhandle residents who couldn’t afford the increases reported being disconnected, leaving many to seek public assistance. People reported frantically lowering their thermostats, unplugging appliances, and even disconnecting their water heater to avoid the rising meter readings.

Pensacola and Escambia County, as well as six other municipalities in the region, asked the Florida Public Service Commission for a do-over of the rate increase, suggesting they were promised lower bills. An online petition, started by three women from competing political parties, had 10,000 signatures within days.

And Mike Papantonio, a nationally renowned trial lawyer from Pensacola whose firm has fought Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and the chemical industries, personally financed months of television ads blasting the “shameless greed” of FPL and the “dysfunctional failure” of the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities.

“This is so bad, we’ve had to spend $40-, $50-, $60,000 to get the message out there that something is so upside-down we have to do something about it,” Papantonio told the Times/Herald last week.

DeSantis cited “the worst inflation in 40 years” and said he was vetoing the bill because “the state of Florida should not contribute to the financial crunch that our citizens are experiencing.”

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