{"id":4338,"date":"2025-10-15T08:27:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T08:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/4338\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T08:27:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T08:27:45","slug":"has-duke-sold-a-lie-to-st-petersburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/4338\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Duke \u2018sold a lie\u2019 to St. Petersburg?"},"content":{"rendered":"

St. Petersburg\u2019s clean energy goals face gale-force headwinds, primarily due to its reliance<\/a> on a publicly traded utility conglomerate.<\/p>\n

Pinellas County terminated an agreement with Duke Energy<\/a> in April amid increasing criticism over soaring electricity costs. At least one city council member wants to follow suit and pull the plug on the company\u2019s Clean Energy Connection (CEC) Program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Councilmember Richie Floyd reiterated his disdain for Duke at a committee meeting Thursday. Quantifiable data on the convoluted, subscription-based CEC program remains elusive for both city officials and residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re not getting what we paid for and we were sold a lie, then I\u2019m not interested in continuing,\u201d Floyd said. \u201cI\u2019m pretty comfortable saying that I don\u2019t want to be a part of the program anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Floyd is not alone in his dismay over the company\u2019s monopoly on electricity sales. Community support for a grassroots \u201cDump Duke<\/a>\u201d campaign has increased, and a social event<\/a> at Voodoo Brewing Co. begins at 6:30 p.m. Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

St. Petersburg\u2019s 30-year contract with Duke ends in August 2026. Councilmember Brandi Gabbard broached the idea of creating a municipal utility in February 2024<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city became Florida\u2019s first to make an official \u201c100% clean energy commitment\u201d in 2019, with a target date of 2035. \u201cI don\u2019t see anything in here that describes how close we are to achieving these goals, or how much progress we\u2019ve made in the last six years,\u201d Floyd said of Thursday\u2019s presentation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the discrepancy between our goals here and what we have covered shows the need for a pretty drastic change.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

St. Petersburg annually spends $10 million on municipal electricity. On-site solar panels accounted for 1% of the 73 million kilowatt hours (kWh) consumed through 1,400 accounts with Duke.\u00a0<\/p>\n

City officials, using taxpayer dollars, bought roughly 22 million kWh of solar power from Duke in 2024. St. Petersburg also participates in the Solar United Neighbors co-op, which integrates its energy into the company\u2019s grid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While it remains unclear how much solar power Duke or its CEC program provides, Rogers said the city is at \u201canywhere from 31% to 33%\u201d of its 100% goal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gabbard noted that understanding the CEC, which St. Petersburg subscribed to in 2021, requires a \u201cpretty complex mathematical equation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cResidents are asking \u2026 what is our return on investment, and we can\u2019t explain it,\u201d Gabbard added. \u201cDuke is asking residents to buy into it \u2026 we as the city can\u2019t even explain it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In April, a Duke representative told county commissioners<\/a> that residential participants pay roughly $14 annually without realizing any financial benefits for about 12 years. Pinellas has spent $3.7 million on CEC fees since 2022 and has generated $3.2 million in credits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The county will formally exit the program Oct. 1. Gabbard wants municipal data \u201cbroken down as clearly as possible\u201d when the committee discusses the local electrical grid\u2019s future, the franchise agreement with Duke and a potential public utility at a July 31 meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a very important, larger piece of the Duke conversation,\u201d Gabbard said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clearwater officials allocated $500,000<\/a> to weigh the pros and cons of establishing a municipal utility in August 2024. That city\u2019s 30-year contract with Duke ends Dec. 31.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Floyd subsequently said that Clearwater\u2019s unanimous vote showed studying the electric grid\u2019s future is \u201creasonable\u201d rather than \u201cradical.\u201d He told the Catalyst that it \u201cputs us in a good position for future negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melissa Seixas, president of St. Petersburg-based Duke Florida, has said that the company\u2019s equipment is \u201cnot for sale.\u201d However, proponents believe a municipal utility would significantly lower bills<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a publicly traded company, Duke is beholden to shareholders. The company has a $92.22 billion market capitalization; its stock price has increased by over 46% in the past five years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In July 2024, Duke finalized a $262 million base rate hike over the next three years. State regulators approved an additional $32 monthly surcharge to help the company recoup hurricane costs in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Floyd previously said that he is \u201cwilling to negotiate with Duke if we can lower the impact on residents\u201d and reduce fossil fuel consumption. He reiterated Thursday that the city has \u201cpaid for a certain amount of clean energy, and they have not delivered.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat program is not \u2026 providing benefits the way they said it would,\u201d Floyd continued. \u201cI can think of significantly better ways we can plot the future of our renewable energy use, our energy grid, with that funding.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg\u2019s clean energy goals face gale-force headwinds, primarily due to its reliance on a publicly traded utility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-4338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}