FPL takes the long view to ensure a resilient energy future for Florida | Opinion

As president and chief executive officer of the largest electric utility in the United States, I’m often asked: What keeps you up at night?

The short answer — everything.

Still, it’s my job to worry, whether it’s about hurricanes, cybersecurity threats or the safety and well-being of Florida Power & Light Company’s almost 9,000 employees and their families.

But there is one issue that truly worries me: short-term thinking.

Now that we’ve entered 2020, it’s more apparent than ever that short-term thinking is prevalent and pervasive. We’ve all become accustomed to whipping out smart devices in search of quick, easy, instantaneous answers. However, real solutions to real problems are almost never easy and can rarely be described in simple, 30-second sound bites.

If I ran FPL as a short-term thinker, I wouldn’t be doing my job effectively, and our customers, undoubtedly, would pay a heavy price.

That’s why, at FPL, we spend a tremendous amount of time and energy looking over the horizon. Serving almost 11 million Floridians with clean, affordable, 24/7 power requires us to plan and, most important, act with a long-term vision. The type of infrastructure we’re investing in is engineered and built to serve generations of customers for several decades.

Smart, long-term investments, however, are rarely quick and easy to execute.

Take, for instance, FPL’s decision almost 20 years ago to modernize our fleet of power plants, systematically tearing down aging, oil-fired plants and replacing them with ultra-efficient clean energy centers that run on U.S.-produced natural gas.

At the time, short-term thinkers relentlessly attacked FPL, arguing the old, inefficient plants were fully paid for and customers shouldn’t be forced to pick up the tab for new power plants. The plants had worked for decades and didn’t violate any environmental rules, so why change?

Fortunately, these short-sighted arguments didn’t prevail.

Fast forward to today, and customers continue to benefit from our state-of-the-art power plants that produce more electricity using much less fuel than those they replaced. Not only has FPL eliminated 130 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions, customers have also saved $10 billion and counting in fuel costs. That’s $10 billion in fuel, mostly imported oil, that we simply didn’t buy. Instead, that money stayed in customers’ pockets and Florida’s economy.

FPL didn’t get here overnight or by accident. It required a long-term commitment and an unwavering belief that smart investments then would generate huge benefits for customers in the future. And, this carefully calculated march throughout the past two decades continues today.

We’re continuing to transform our power generation fleet, making Florida a world leader in solar energy by installing more than 30 million solar panels by 2030. In fact, we’ll bring 10 more solar power plants under construction into operation in 2020 alone and, assuming we get permission from Tallahassee, we’ll provide customers with the choice to harness the power of the sun like never before through the country’s largest, most innovative community solar program.

Again, this didn’t happen by accident. FPL began researching and building small solar projects in 1984, long before it was cool to be green. Back then, solar wasn’t economically viable. But by staying open-minded and being willing to listen and work with others throughout the industry and community, we are now bringing customers unprecedented amounts of solar power while keeping bills among the lowest in the country.

We continue to invest billions of dollars annually in Florida, and our steadfast commitment to clean, efficient energy and our long-term thinking is why we’re able to lower typical residential monthly bills by nearly $4 starting this month.

FPL is also continuing to build America’s strongest, smartest energy grid with a new emphasis on putting more neighborhood power lines underground. While this will take decades to complete, it’s unequivocally the right thing to do for our state’s resiliency, both during day-to-day operations and during major storms that, undoubtedly, will, hit us again.

Here’s the bottom line: Sometimes, doing the right thing isn’t easy. Sometimes, it means making a decision that may not benefit you directly in the short term.

As short-term thinkers come and go, my commitment is that FPL will stay focused on delivering best-in-class value and reliability while never wavering from our long-term approach. To do so, we’ll continue to foster a culture of being open-minded, collaborative, innovative, financially disciplined and unafraid to tackle the tough problems today so we can position future generations for success tomorrow.

Eric Silagy is the president and chief executive officer of Florida Power & Light Company.