With electric and gas bills set to increase for millions of residents across the commonwealth on June 1, Democrats in the Pennsylvania House recently introduced legislation that would limit profits for privately owned utility companies.
“ We are in an energy crisis. We are in an affordability crisis. Working people are just in a crisis right now trying to afford a lot of things,” State Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler (D-Philadelphia), chair of the Pennsylvania House Energy Committee, said in an interview.
“This legislation calls on companies, on utility corporations to really respect the struggles that people are having right now and not have regular people’s bills be any higher than they have to be to provide safe and reliable service.”
A 2025 report from the American Economic Liberties Project states that return on equity, or how effectively a company turns shareholder investments into profits, is a primary driver of rate increases, costing consumers billions of dollars, while providing little to no improvement to service reliability.
Accordig to the report, privately owned utility companies have increased their rates 49% more than the rate of inflation over the past three years, while their publicly-owned counterparts have increased rates 44% less than the rate of inflation.
“ A lot of people’s interaction with energy pricing is really just their bill that they get in the mail or that they look at online,” Fiedler said. “The numbers that are in that bill, there is a whole process for arriving at those, and that’s really what this legislation gets at is putting limitations on how much return on equity can be made, and as a result, the whole goal is to lower people’s bills.”
The PECO Energy Company, which is owned by Exelon, recently came under scrutiny for proposing, and eventually withdrawing, a $510 million rate increase for customers across southeastern Pennsylvania.
PECO delivers electricity to 1.7 million customers throughout the Philadelphia region and natural gas to 553,000 customers in the Philadelphia suburbs, and earlier this year, the company proposed a 12.5% rate hike for electricity users and 11.4% increase for natural gas customers to go into effect in 2027.
The increased rates were supposed to fund $429 million in electricity infrastructure investments and $81 million for natural gas upgrades, the company said.
Exelon reported to shareholders earlier this month that PECO’s profits increased from $266 million in the first quarter of 2025 to $278 million in the first quarter of 2026. Exelon President and CEO Calvin Butler also took home $15.6 million in pay last year, according to Quiver.
PECO’s profits previously soared by nearly 50% after rates increased at the beginning of 2025, according to WHYY, and the latest round of rate increases drew bipartisan backlash from political officials across the commonwealth.
Lawmakers throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania sent letters to PECO expressing their outrage, while Gov. Josh Shapiro called PECO’s rate hike “pure greed.”
“PECO’s proposed rate case would have increased Pennsylvanians’ utility bills, but I demanded that their CEO put customers first and withdraw their rate hike request. PECO listened, and I appreciate that the company is willing to prioritize affordability at a time when Pennsylvanians are worried about rising costs,” Shapiro said in a statement last month.
He added: “This withdrawal is the right step for consumers – and we’re going to keep fighting to make sure utility companies are focused on keeping costs down while maintaining safe and reliable service.”
