Florida Power & Light’s profit margins consistently ranked among the highest in the nation over the past five years and topped other utilities’ in 2024 and 2025, with 27 cents of every dollar in revenue last year retained as profit, according to a new report.
The report, released in March by the Energy & Policy Institute, a watchdog organization, was based on financial data from 110 investor-owned utilities from 2021 through 2024. Data from 2025 also was included for 79 utilities that had reported annual results to the Securities and Exchange Commission in time to be included in the analysis. The findings do not account for a $7 billion rate hike state regulators approved for FPL in November 2025 that consumer groups characterized as the largest in U.S. history. The rate hike faces a legal challenge in state court.
“FPL’s profit margin is like sky-rocketing essentially over that time period in comparison to other Florida utilities,” said Shelby Green, a researcher involved in the Energy & Policy Institute report.
“Customers are seeing rate increases happening every year. They’re looking at their utility bills, and they wonder out of all the lines on here, what can I do to make my rate go down?” she said. “Really where customers can make the most impact is asking the Florida Public Service Commission why utilities are making so much profit when so many Floridians are going without.”
FPL did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the analysis. The utility is the largest in Florida, serving 12 million state residents.
Nationwide, electricity rates are rising. One cause is fluctuating prices for natural gas, the primary energy source in Florida. Utilities are investing in new infrastructure such as power plants and transmission lines. Disasters such as hurricanes, which have intensified as fossil fuel emissions warm the global climate, also are forcing repairs and improvements to the grid.
Another reason for the escalating rates are utility profit margins, which have increased as consumer bills have climbed, according to the report. The analysis found that a substantial share of what consumers pay for electricity ends up in the pockets of investors as profit. About 13 cents of every dollar paid to the analyzed utilities between 2021 and 2025 was retained as profit, an amount that rose in 2025 to 15 cents. That means for a $200 bill, $30 was retained as profit.
Some of the utilities examined in the report consistently operated at significantly higher margins. Among them was FPL, which had an average profit margin between 2021 and 2025 of 23.5 percent, second behind MidAmerican Energy’s profit margin of 27 percent. FPL’s margins in 2024 and 2025 were 27 percent, the highest in the nation. In 2025 the margin topped that of SoCalEdison (26 percent); Georgia Power (23 percent); Duke Energy Carolinas (22 percent); and Alabama Power, Public Service Electric & Gas and Virginia Power (tied at 18 percent).
Lower-income communities are hardest-hit by rising energy rates, said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, chief executive officer at the CLEO Institute, a Florida-based nonprofit dedicated to climate education and advocacy.
“The same communities that are on the front lines of the climate crisis are being pushed farther behind by rising energy costs, and in a state like Florida where extreme heat is rising we know energy is not an option. It’s survival,” she said. “What we really have is a system that is working for corporate profits, not for Floridians or ratepayers. I mean it’s pretty simple. We are using an energy source that is volatile, contributes to pollution in the air that is continuing to increase temperatures. And at the same time we consume a lot more energy because we need more energy to cool our homes, and all that burden is passed on to the ratepayers and not the corporation.”
In Florida, the average electric bill in 2025 was $167.51, up from $128.65 in 2020, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of data released in February by the federal Energy Information Administration. In 2025, bills in the state were the seventh-highest in the nation.
The Energy & Policy Institute report did not include municipal utilities, rural electric cooperatives or other non-investor-owned utilities, which are non-profit entities and operate under different structures.
“A lot of families are struggling and can’t afford their electric bills as it is, and people are having their power cut off. Over a million customers of FPL are getting disconnected every year from not being able to afford their electric power. Families are having to choose between paying for medicine and food or having some kind of air conditioning in the summer,” said Bradley Marshall, senior attorney at Earthjustice, an advocacy group. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Dan Gearino contributed to this report.
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Amy Green
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Amy Green covers the environment and climate change from Orlando, Florida. She is a mid-career journalist and author whose extensive reporting on the Everglades is featured in the book MOVING WATER, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, and podcast DRAINED, available wherever you get your podcasts. Amy’s work has been recognized with many awards, including a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award and Public Media Journalists Association award.
