Florida Power & Light ranked second nationally in profit margins among investor-owned utilities, capturing 23.51 percent of customer payments as corporate profit between 2021 and 2024, according to a new report by the Energy and Policy Institute. The utility watchdog group analyzed financial data from 110 investor-owned electric utilities nationwide, finding FPL trailing only MidAmerican Energy at 27.22 percent profit margins.
For Florida customers paying a $200 monthly electric bill, roughly $47 goes directly to corporate profits under FPL’s current margin structure. The Energy and Policy Institute examined utilities that reported approximately $186 billion in total profits over the four-year period, with preliminary 2025 data suggesting profit margins are accelerating to an average of 14.6 percent nationwide.
“For a customer paying a $200 monthly electric bill, that means roughly $30 went to corporate profits,” the report states, using the national average calculation. Utilities in the Southeast, where FPL operates, averaged nearly 16 percent profit margins over the same period, significantly higher than utilities operating in competitive regional electricity markets.
The findings highlight how utilities operate as government-granted monopolies where customers cannot choose another provider and state regulators set rates designed to deliver guaranteed profits to shareholders. “In 2024, the average authorized return on equity for regulated U.S. utilities was 9.7%, while the average of 34 major investment firms’ long-term equity return forecasts for the broad U.S. market was 6.7%,” the report states.
Utilities with guaranteed customer bases are considered lower-risk investments than the broader market, yet they receive higher returns than market forecasts suggest they should earn. An analysis cited in the report estimated that excess returns cost customers approximately $50 billion per year, or roughly $300 per household annually across the United States.
“The gap between Southeastern utilities and their counterparts in competitive markets is large enough to warrant scrutiny of whether vertically integrated monopolies operating outside of RTOs are consistently extracting more profit from captive customers than is necessary to provide safe and reliable electricity service,” the report states. Regional transmission organizations like PJM, which covers parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, show utilities averaging 11.8 percent profit margins.
The report outlines potential regulatory changes to reduce profit shares in customer bills, including lowering authorized returns on equity and strengthening consumer representation in rate proceedings. Research cited found that states with independent consumer advocates in utility rate proceedings authorized returns on equity nearly half a percentage point lower on average across more than 1,600 rate cases over nearly three decades.
“Utilities arrive with large legal and financial teams; residential customers rarely have equivalent representation without a funded advocate,” the report states. About 30 percent of the nation’s electricity is sold by nonprofit utilities, mostly cooperatives or municipally owned systems, that collect no profit and typically charge lower rates than investor-owned utilities.
“Profit levels are the product of policy decisions made by state utility commissions, typically in contested rate proceedings, using methodologies that have evolved over decades,” the report states. “That means they can be changed.” The Energy and Policy Institute’s analysis represents the first public-facing tool examining utility profit margins across multiple states and companies.