Power Struggle: What Stalled the Northwest’s Push for Green Energy?
Produced in partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, Power Struggle explains why states in the Pacific Northwest — despite their portrayal as leaders in green energy — rank near the bottom of the country for the growth of renewable power. This reporting team broke down green energy production and its relationship to the nation’s electrical grid and explained how the Northwest region’s electrical grid was incapable of hooking up all the new wind and solar farms that are needed to reduce fossil fuel use. The series was eye-opening to local lawmakers and served as a catalyst for reform.
Power Play: How utilities paid a consulting group that infiltrated local news media, attacked clean energy foes and intimidated public officials
A months-long investigation by NPR’s David Folkenflik and Floodlight’s Mario Ariza and Miranda Green uncovered just how far two major power companies went to try to make sure their political foes didn’t dampen their profits or hold them accountable. The reporting, building off of an earlier Floodlight investigation with the Orlando Sentinel, found that Alabama Power and Florida Power & Light paid consulting company Matrix LLC millions over a decade, resulting in undisclosed payments to news outlets that cast the utilities in a positive light and were critical of those who questioned their power. A freelance ABC News producer was also hired to misleadingly represent herself and confront politicians over controversies relevant to Matrix clients. These revelations were followed by leadership changes at both power companies, internal investigations into their work with Matrix, as well as broad calls for transparency and reform. ABC News also severed ties with the freelance journalist. The story offers a rare window into the way power companies and consultants manipulate the democratic system, and the pressure local regulators and lawmakers confront if they seek to hold those corporations accountable, and what happens when local news erodes.
Big Green
The Washington Post exposed wayward practices by the Nature Conservancy, the nation’s largest private environmental group.
Down on the Factory: Cheap Food, Hidden Cost
The series “Down on the Factory: Cheap Food, Hidden Costs” exposed the negative environmental impact of huge, industrialized hog and chicken farms.
