Rate hike challenged

Sierra Club asks Supreme Court to overturn settlement

The Sierra Club goes to court to stop $811 million increase approved last year for FPL.

The national environmental advocacy group Sierra Club is asking the Florida Supreme Court to overturn the $811 million rate hike approved last year for Florida Power & Light Co., the state’s largest utility.

The rate hike, approved by the Florida Public Service Commission on Nov. 29, requires FPL customers to fund natural gas plant expansions that FPL did not justify as the most necessary or costefficient option, the Sierra Club alleges in an administrative appeal filed Wednesday with the state’s highest court.

The Sierra Club is accusing FPL of violating a state law requiring that it prove the plant expansions would be the most “prudent investment.” And in a news release announcing the appeal, the club said the PSC failed to require FPL to analyze alternatives “despite knowing [the upgrades] FPL was building could be economically obsolete and superseded by alternative resources as early as 2020.”

The appeal asserts that alternatives studied by FPL should have included solar energy, which it says could serve peak demand cost effectively and save money.

The appeal also asks the PSC to specify how much of the rate increase approved on Nov. 29 is earmarked for the gas plants project and is now unrecoverable, and that it “allow only the recovery of FPL’s expenses that can actually be determined as prudent,” the release said.

In an email statement, FPL spokeswoman Sara Gatewood said the utility was disappointed but not surprised by the appeal, calling Sierra Club “an extreme group that takes extreme positions.”

“Rather than recognizing our innovative approach to running our business and the resulting significant benefits for all customers, including 1,200 megawatts of costeffective new solar right here in

The appeal asserts that alternatives studied by FPL should have included solar energy, which it says could serve peak demand cost effectively and save money.

Florida over the next four years as well as plans to shut down three coal plants by 2019, this out-of-state group is instead moving forward with more frivolous, expensive litigation that will cost all Floridians — not just FPL customers, but all Florida taxpayers,” the statement said.

Gatewood pointed out that the rate-hike process lasted nearly a year and involved “more than 30 witnesses, countless hours of cross examination by attorneys for all parties, including the Sierra Club,” and resulted in a fair settlement that “supports billions of dollars in planned investments to continue improving FPL’s electrical infrastructure, which is already one of the cleanest and most reliable in the U.S.”

In its appeal, the Sierra Club said the PSC allowed FPL to recover costs of replacing 44 pre-existing gas or oil “peaker” plants — used to produce power during periods of peak demand in South Florida — with seven large “peakers” in Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers.

FPL undertook the project “unilaterally” and without required approvals from February 2015 to December 2016, with construction estimated at $772.4 million, the appeal says.