Ron DeSantis’s political appointees just approved the largest electric rate hike in U.S. history — a deal that will export about $7 billion of Floridians' money to fuel profits for global corporate shareholders.

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Florida Power & Light (FPL) is not a public agency, nor is it a co-op. It’s a for-profit, investor-owned utility, and it supplies most of the electricity flowing through Southwest Florida’s power grid. FPL’s largest shareholders are Wall Street giants: Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street. Florida-based institutional investors — like the State Board of Administration of the Florida Retirement System, collectively hold less than 0.4% of the company. So when FPL’s profits go up, the primary financial beneficiaries aren’t the people paying the bills. They’re global investment funds whose job is to maximize returns for their own clients — wealthy individuals and institutions.

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FPL is a monopoly, so we can’t switch providers

 

Florida law divides the state into exclusive service territories, each served by one investor-owned utility or co-op. Within its assigned territory, FPL is the only company allowed to sell electricity to customers. You cannot choose another electric provider, and competitors are legally barred from entering FPL’s service area. FPL is guaranteed the customer base, and customers are required to use FPL. Even if you live in an area given to a co-op, you may still be paying FPL for your electricity. If you live in Lee County, for example, you pay your electric bill to Lee County Electric Coop, but LCEC does not generate any electricity; it simply purchases almost all of it from FPL and re-sells it to Lee County residents and businesses.

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This monopoly status is granted by the state, and in exchange FPL is supposed to be regulated. 

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Foxes regulating the henhouse

 

All five of the regulators on the Florida Public Service Commission are political appointees chosen by Governor Ron DeSantis — not elected by voters. Public records show that DeSantis has received hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years from NextEra Energy, FPL’s parent company — both directly from the company’s PAC, but also indirectly and sometimes mysteriously.  For example, according to reporting in the Miami Herald, in the run-up to the 2018 gubernatorial election when DeSantis was first elected, Broken Promises — an enigmatic nonprofit group registered to a UPS box in Washington, D.C. — gave $25,000 to a political committee called Consumers for Energy Fairness. It was the first donation the committee received that year. The next day, Consumers for Energy Fairness passed $25,000 to Ron DeSantis’ political committee, according to state campaign finance records.

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And it’s not just DeSantis who gets NextEra money. According to publicly-reported data, NextEra has pumped more than $20 million into Florida political committees since 2018, and the majority of that money has flowed into Republican-aligned committees and candidates.

 

That makes NextEra Energy one of the most politically powerful corporations in Florida. So, even though the PSC is technically the regulator, the real-world dynamic is very different. Dollars given to political candidates mean friendly regulators, and that equals support for the corporation’s goal of maximizing its profits without meaningful public accountability.  

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Most of the news stories about the rate hike are emphasizing that the hike individuals and businesses will each pay is relatively small — starting out at something like $2.50 per month in January. Base rates are expected to have increased by about $8 per month by the end of 2029. 

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But the base rate is just the beginning.  As a regulated monopoly, under Florida law FPL is entitled to make a certain profit level — currently a 10.95 to 11.95 percent return on its investments in Florida’s grid. By law, if FPL’s earnings fall below that authorized profit level—due to fuel costs, storms, inflation, new construction costs, or anything else—the Florida Public Service Commission can approve another rate increase and add surcharges and customer fees to ratepayers’ bills.

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What are we getting for our money?

 

FPL argues that the $7 billion in new revenues are needed to “power Florida’s growth,” upgrade aging infrastructure, harden the grid against storms, and expand solar and battery storage. 

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What’s notably absent from the publicly available filings is a detailed breakdown of where the $7 billion will actually go. There is no clear accounting of how much is dedicated to solar and battery storage, storm-hardening, or other major infrastructure needs.

 

Those claims deserve scrutiny. Florida’s explosive, largely uncontrolled development boom—driven by questionable land-use decisions and political choices, not by ordinary ratepayers—requires massive new transmission lines, substations, and generation projects. Every new subdivision, high-rise, and gated community expands FPL’s “rate base,” the pool of capital investments on which the utility earns its guaranteed 10.95–11.95% profit. Each dollar of new construction increases the company’s profits and fuels Wall Street returns. Bottom line: ratepayers are underwriting breakneck growth in Florida and increasing FPL’s guaranteed profit margin.