"Florida is in the midst of an affordability crisis, and that includes housing and insurance and people's utility bills. And we've watched the utility bills for Florida rate payers go up and up and up."
“Florida is in the midst of an affordability crisis, and that includes housing and insurance and people’s utility bills. And we’ve watched the utility bills for Florida rate payers go up and up and up”
The CLEO Institute released a report, Utility Influence: Connecting the Dots, which found that Florida’s largest investor-owned utilities have spent more than $80 million since 2018 on lobbying and political contributions, roughly $1 million per month.
“CLEO’s Connecting the Dots report which tracks utility contributions highlights how these outcomes are shaped, and who ultimately pays the price. Energy should support people’s lives, not strain them.”
“One thing that maybe shouldn’t have surprised me but did surprise me in this research, was the nearly 100 lobbyists that these utility companies have in Tallahassee,” Maguire said. “There’s roughly one lobbyist for every one-and a-half legislators.”
The concerns about hyperscale data centers have grown substantially around the country over the past year, as they consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. A conventional data center consumes as much electricity as 10,000 to 25,000 households, according to the International Energy Agency.
“We really are facing an affordability crisis in the state of Florida, and I think young people are feeling it across the board,” Montealegre said. “We definitely need to push for accountability when it comes to energy costs.”
“Floridians are paying the price for a monopoly utility system that prioritizes profits over the basic needs of consumers,” said Samantha Kaddis, Advocacy and Campaigns Associate with The CLEO Institute.
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