Dump Duke held a press conference last Wednesday supporting a municipal takeover of St. Petersburg’s electric grid. The group said that even among investor-owned utilities, Duke Energy’s rates are exorbitant, and said investors are less responsive to customers than local elected officials are to voters.
St. Petersburg’s contract with Duke Energy is up for renewal this summer for the first time in 30 years. The city is exploring the possibility of buying local power lines from Duke Energy, then buying electricity wholesale and selling it to residents through an electric utility run by the city. This process is referred to as “municipalization.” Other Florida cities that switched experienced lower costs and fewer service interruptions, according to pro-municipalization group Dump Duke.
Dump Duke was joined by Faith in Florida, Suncoast Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, St. Petersburg City Council Vice Chair Richie Floyd, and the Pinellas chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. Dump Duke was started by two members of Pinellas DSA and remains affiliated with the organization.
No tax increase expected
Duke-affiliated interest group Pinellas Energy Alliance says on their website that Duke would fight a buyout of the electric grid, leaving the city with debt and tax increases. Floyd said the debt would be paid off through electric bills rather than taxes, and that Duke isn’t much different.
“Duke Energy takes out debt to upgrade our infrastructure, and they pay for that debt using our utility rates,” Floyd said. “(Duke) pays for their shareholder dividends and their profit margin through our utility rates as well. We’re calling on this process to happen within the realm of the city, so that there’s no longer a profit margin associated with this and those revenues can be returned to the residents of St. Petersburg.”
Feasibility studies
Clearwater recently conducted a municipalization feasibility study that projected a 10% electric bill decrease within the first year, with savings increasing as the debt decreases over a 30-year period. Duke Energy sponsored its own study through utility-favored firm Concentric that put a higher price tag on the grid. Both studies acknowledge that their results aren’t concrete.
St. Petersburg’s city council is awaiting a feasibility study that they requested in August. The study can’t start until Mayor Ken Welch’s office puts out a request for proposals, which still hasn’t happened as of publication but is expected to go out by the time this story hits newsstands. Welch is a former employee of Florida Power Corp., which later became Duke Energy Florida, and he issued a controversial “Duke Energy Day” proclamation in 2024.
Winter Park City Manager Randy Knight spoke with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay reporters on WMNF Tampa’s public affairs show “The Skinny” last Friday. He said that when Winter Park municipalized in 2005, Progress Energy (now Duke Energy) said it would cost the city $100 million, while the city’s feasibility study predicted $15 million. The final cost was closer to $43 million. Knight added that it’s reasonable to expect that a similar in-the-middle figure could be true for St. Petersburg or Clearwater.
Winter Park is a much smaller city, and its contract with Duke at the time included a right to purchase the grid back when it came time to renew, so it’s not a direct analog. Investor-owned utility supporters, however, seem to be following a similar playbook.
The Duke-funded feasibility study was conducted by utility-favored Concentric Energy Advisors. Concentric has gained a reputation for helping investor-owned utilities fight municipalization efforts.
When Winter Park was attempting to take over its power grid, Concentric CEO Danielle Powers worked for Navigant Consulting. Navigant was recommended to investor-owned utilities in a 2003 strategic guide on fighting municipalization obtained by CL, written by investor-owned utility interest group Edison Electric Institute. Duke’s fight to stay in control mirrors much of the advice given in this article.
St. Pete City Council member asks Duke to fight fair
Floyd—who is running for re-election—asked Duke and its affiliates, including the Pinellas Energy Alliance, to avoid spreading misinformation. “There have already been flyers going around saying that this is going to impact taxes, which is a lie,” Floyd said. “I’m asking for Duke’s front groups and Duke Energy to not fund these lies and to not participate in them.”
A quick glance at Pinellas Energy Alliance’s websites shows that even when the information they provide is factually correct, it can be skewed and misleading.
The St. Pete Energy Alliance website says creating a municipal electric utility would involve “borrowing billions of dollars from big Wall Street banks and putting the city billions of dollars in debt.” While this may be true, it’s not the full picture.
“Big Wall Street banks” already finance Duke Energy’s debt, and massive investment groups like Vanguard and BlackRock are Duke’s largest corporate shareholders.
Currently, a portion of each electric bill goes to financing interest on Duke Energy’s debt it takes out to build infrastructure, and an additional portion goes directly to the pockets of investors as profit. A switch to municipal would mean a consumer would still pay for that interest over the course of a municipal bond (usually 30 years), but otherwise would no longer pay for the investor profit.
Floyd also claimed that the Duke-affiliated Pinellas Energy Alliance is engaging in “predatory hiring practices.”
“We’ve been told by constituents that they’re preying on people who are desperate for a job,” Floyd said, referencing the paid canvassers Pinellas Energy Alliance hires who don’t know that they’re being paid by a Duke-affiliated group.
“To try to pit people in need against other people in need, who need utility rate decreases, is not professional. It’s not a high level of standard, and it’s not what we want from someone who’s a partner in the city,” Floyd said.
Environmental concerns
Pinellas Energy Alliance points to Boulder, Colorado and the State of Nebraska as two examples of municipalization slowing down a switch to clean energy. Governments, the group says, move slower in making the switch and have more bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. Josh Sproat, clean energy co-chair of the Suncoast Sierra Club, doesn’t buy it.
“The marketplace has spoken: clean technologies like energy efficiency, solar, and batteries are now the cheapest, most reliable ways to power our communities,” Sproat told CL. “Duke has slow-walked deploying these resources to maximize investor profits at the expense of their captive customers. A city-owned electric utility could prioritize and incentivize the deployment of flexible modern technologies to lower customers’ bills, reduce pollution, and keep the power on when bad weather strikes.”
Duke’s touted ‘decrease’ isn’t really a decrease
Duke Energy made headlines for an anticipated rate reduction in March of this year. Dump Duke co-chair Jason Scott said this isn’t really a decrease, but a planned lifting of temporary increases imposed due to storm recovery costs and to offset the winter dip in energy use. Duke is lifting the charge early only because they overcharged customers by $21 million,” Scott said. “Do you think this was out of generosity?” Scott asked. “Of course not.”
“They’re not doing us any favors, but they’ll do all these press releases,” Dump Duke co-chair Marley Price said. “They’ll do all these charity events. But who’s paying for it at the end of the day? We are.”
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This article appears in Jan. 29 – Feb. 04.