CEO of Exelon, Pepco’s parent company, receives pay bump while electric bills skyrocket and performance declines
Calvin Butler, the CEO of Exelon, rakes in $15.6 million in 2025 according to the Energy & Policy Institute. This is an increase of nearly $1 million from 2024 despite Exelon (and many of its subsidiary utilities) failing to meet its own customer satisfaction performance standard. Exelon rewarding its CEO with a pay bump in lieu of a stagnating economy, insane electric bills, and overall customer resentment at large corporations is in line with other investor-owned utilities and their greed-based model. Regular people suffer while executives and shareholders rake in the cash - because who’s going to stop them?
It’s obvious that Exelon’s first (and potentially only) priority is making profit. It’s not delivering reliable power; it’s not fine-tuning an exceptional product; it’s not even ensuring that the grid on which this country relies is safe. No, instead it’s money. It always has been. If the excessive salaries, bonuses, and lobbied-for ROEs weren’t enough evidence, how Exelon decides to spend ratepayer money should be.
As CEO, Calvin Butler can utilize Exelon’s private jet for personal reasons, extending this privilege to family members and guests, with a tentative cap of around $300,000 in expenses. Who pays for that, exactly? The ratepayer through bills, of course. Butler and other Exelon executives also enjoy exclusive tickets to sporting and entertainment events, all typically at luxury price points, and always on the company dime.
It’s unconscionable that rich executives gobble up lavish perks and obscene displays of wealth while regular people go bankrupt paying their electric bills. Our current system is set up to reward greed, excess, and overall bad business. What is the point of managing a prudent budget for the company if they can just offload these costs onto the customer? The customer can’t shop around for another utility and Exelon already controls regulatory boards with immense lobbying and corporate connections.
We need public power—this is the only way to return fairness and affordability to our utility system. By cutting out the cancer of shareholder greed, our cities can finally move towards a system that prioritizes safe, affordable, reliable power over the short-term, rampant obsession for shareholder profit.