![]() The 12 companies collectively paid about 70 top executives $1.2bn, or about $5.9m annually per executive. Meanwhile, the company paid $2.3bn in dividends. ![]() “That was one of the data points that really hit home because that’s just such a small scrape of the amount of money that utilities are shelling out to shareholders that could really change lives in millions of households,” Goodson Bell said.įirstEnergy, which serves Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio, shut off power about 240,000 times for customer debts totalling about $25m. On average each spent about $4bn on dividends, and customer debt from their collective 4.9m shutoffs totaled about 1% of their dividend spending. It examined financial filings from 12 large utilities responsible for 86% of the shutoffs between January 2020 and October 2022. The report highlighted how little utilities would need to cut into dividends, stock buybacks and executive salaries to forgive customer debt. But Florida no longer requires utilities to keep track of disconnections. Between 2020-2021, Florida utilities shut off power 1.4m times, a “staggering” figure largely driven by NextEra’s Florida Light and Power division. Some of the companies that probably have the highest totals aren’t included. It was followed by The Southern Co, DTE Energy, Ameren and FirstEnergy. Exelon Corp, the parent company to utility giants like ComEd in Illinois and Peco in Pennsylvania, reported 648,000 shutoffs. Illinois posted the highest number of shutoffs during that time period at over 500,000, and it was followed by Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Ohio. The report also reveals the issue is worsening: the number of electric shutoffs jumped by nearly one-third and gas shutoffs spiked by 76% between 2021 and the first 10 months of 2022. In the 30 states where shutoff data was available, utilities cut service 1.5m times during the first 10 months of 2022, and an estimated 4.2m times nationwide. It was compiled with the utility industry analyst Energy and Policy Institute and BailoutWatch. ![]() “Shutoffs allow corporate utilities to punish customers’ economic precarity while guaranteeing record profits and massive payouts for themselves and their investors,” the authors wrote in the report. Losing power has an often devastating impact on a household, including in terms of health and safety. The shutoffs disproportionately affect low-income customers and those from communities of color, and the “harrowing” situation is driven by corporate profiteering, said Selah Goodson Bell, a study co-author and energy justice campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity. ![]()
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