lookout for new technologies in areas such as wind and solar energy, as well as applications for other types of renewable energy and new ways to make existing generating facilities more efficient.
It’s too soon to tell whether or not deregulation will be successful. In general, I am a big believer in competitive markets. But the electricity industry has unique issues that make it difficult to be truly deregulated, and different regions of our country have approached deregulation in different ways.
For the near future, I don’t see any move to deregulate electric utilities in Florida. Florida has a progressive approach to regulation that has served Floridians very well. Rates at FPL are below the national average, we have an adequate supply of power and our system reliability is significantly better than the nationwide average.
For FPL Group, social responsibility means showing a real commitment to the communities we serve, to the environment and to future generations. At the community level, we help people by providing assistance to customers in crisis who can’t pay their electric bills, building energy-smart homes for low-income families and contributing to United Way, to name a few of our programs. Concern about the environment is not a recent fad at FPL Group. It has been one of our guiding principles for many years. We believe that meeting our customer’s need for electricity must go hand-in-hand with protecting the environment.
As for the future, we must take effective action to slow, halt and reverse greenhouse gas emissions. We need to ensure that our children and grandchildren do not suffer the effects of climate change because this generation failed to act.
MONTY continued from 18 front-end costs over the life of investments in energy efficiency and renewable and distributed generation are critical to the acceptance and implementation of these technologies. For this reason, one would expect and hope that financing programs that have this levelizing effect would be central to federal and state energy policy, but lamentably, for the most part, this is not the case. Appropriations and ratepayer-generated funding for energy efficiency programs have been falling in recent years. And the lion’s share of grant money in recent energy bills has not gone to renewable and distributed generation. To the contrary, newly enacted federal authority to condemn transmission rights of way across public and private lands, together with regulatory policies that allow higher returns on investments in new transmission, have the effect of tying load centers to remote baseload generation and discouraging investment in more efficient (less losses) local and distributed generation.
We were disappointed, or course, that we weren’t able to complete the Constellation merger. Constellation is an excellent and innovative company that would have matched up well with FPL Group. But as I said then, I have great optimism for the future of FPL Group as a stand-alone company.
Florida Power & Light is a premier electric franchise with customer growth that exceeds the industry average. FPL Energy is one of the best and most consistent performing wholesale generation businesses in the nation, and has outstanding growth prospects. It is increasingly contributing a higher percentage of our earnings each year, while maintaining a lower risk profile than most unregulated generation companies. FPL Group has one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry, affording us the ability to consider a variety of opportunities to add to our portfolio, as well as to reinvest in our business. I’m confident that FPL Group will continue to grow shareholder value in the near and long term.
Having said that, scope and scale do matter in this business, and we believe there will be continued consolidation in the industry. FPL Group is well positioned going forward on a stand-alone basis. However, if the right opportunity presented itself, we would take a serious look to see if it could help us to further grow value for our shareholders.
The need for abundant clean energy is one of society’s key challenges today. At FPL Group, we’re driven by engineering and technology, and we’re one of the industry leaders in developing new solutions. We’re a company that cares about our customers, our employees, our shareholders and our environment. We have outstanding growth opportunities going forward – especially for bright, energetic people. Join us and help create the future.
While too many of our political energy avatars have yet to hear Dr. Sovacool’s thoughtful call to action, it appears to have resonated elsewhere. Dr. Sovacool’s home academy, Virginia Tech, recently announced that it will oversee a newly created $500 million fund for investing in efficiency upgrades to buildings in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. As with comparable programs in Cambridge, Mass., and the Clinton Climate Initiative led by the former president in a dozen cities around the world, the Virginia Tech program will work with an energy services provider to identify economical efficiency upgrades to buildings. The for-profit investor Hannon Armstrong will front the cost of the efficiency upgrades, and the building owner will repay Hannon Armstrong over time from the savings achieved, thereby levelizing the cost over all or some significant portion of the life of the technology.
One can only hope that future energy policies better promote and not impede innovative initiatives such as these in addition to or in lieu of the Full Monty.
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