If I’m Edward Blue, the CEO at Dominion Energy, I’m torqued at finding out I’m only 10th on the list of massively overpaid energy CEOs compiled by the Energy and Policy Institute.
The guy at the top of the list, Bill Fehrman, the CEO of American Electric Power, was paid $36.6 million in 2025, according to the Top 10 list released by the institute on Wednesday.
AEP has more than 5 million power customers in 11 states, including Virginia.
Blue, at Dominion, which also has more than 5 million power customers, somehow only made $16 million in 2025, which was better than he did in 2024, when he was paid an even more paltry $12.9 million.
A $3.1 million raise, 24.3 percent.
Nice, when you can get it.
Even nicer: the $23.3 million pay raise for Fehrman at AEP, driven, according to the Energy and Policy Institute analysis, by stock awards intended to motivate Fehrman to “create sustainable shareholder value,” incentivize focus on “longer-term results,” and reduce the risk of CEO turnover.
I mean, if you don’t bump a guy’s pay $23.3 million in a year, he might start looking around.
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“So long as profits increase, utility executives will be rewarded with six- and seven-figure pay raises, regardless of how many customers are struggling to make ends meet,” said Jonathan Kim, the research and communications manager at the Energy and Policy Institute.
“As their companies continue to ask for rate increase after rate increase, the idea that CEOs deserve to make up to 500 times more than the customers they’re supposed to serve is insulting,” Kim said.
I don’t know what this Jonathan Kim guy is trying to get at.
Electric utilities collected more than $200 billion in profit in the four-year period from 2021-2024, with an average of 12.8 cents of every dollar collected from electric customers’ bills going to profit.
Holy return on investment, Batman, indeed.
Preliminary data indicate that profit share has increased to 14.6 cents of every dollar in 2025.
They got us over a barrel; it’s not like we don’t need electricity, one, and two, the utilities make sure to line the pockets of dumb politicians who make sure that the power suppliers get every penny they can, so that they can continue to line the pockets of dumb polticians.
It’s a cycle, is what it is.
The rich, eternally, get richer, because that’s what we vote for.
I’m rooting for the Dominion guy to move up in the Top 10 next year, personally.
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Chris Graham
