Power push for $200M called bad for consumers
Fact Box
The recommendations would allow Progress Energy to collect more than $200 million from consumers to pay for new reactor construction.
TALLAHASSEE - The Florida Public Service Commission will be urged during an 11:30 a.m. phone-based news conference Wednesday to reject staff recommendations to allow FPL and Progress Energy to charge customers in advance to pay for building unlicensed nuclear reactors.
The Commission is expected to vote Friday on the staff recommendations issued last week.
Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, said Progress and FPL are "betting the farm" on new reactors by gambling on overpriced, excess capacity that could be an economic disaster with Florida ratepayers left holding the bag. Cooper testified during the PSC proceedings on the new reactors.
Sara Barczak, ,Southern Alliance for Clean Energy program director, will outline the organization's objections to the recommendations, which would allow Progress to collect more than $200 million from consumers to pay for new reactor construction.
Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Peter Bradford, now an adjunct professor at Vermont Law School, will also testify against the plan.He served as chair of the New York and Maine utility commissions, and advised many states on utility restructuring issues.Bradford also testified in the early cost recovery case before the FL PSC for one of Progress Energy's largest industrial users.
