New analysis notes Columbus exec is highest-paid utility CEO, while customers struggle to pay bills

An April analysis by the Energy & Policy Institute found that CEOs of investor-owned electric and gas utilities were paid $626 million in 2025. And Ohio-based AEP’s CEO, Bill Fehrman, made out with $36.6 million in earnings—that’s over $8 million more than the 2nd highest-paid CEO, and a whopping $23.3 million pay increase from his total compensation the year prior.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited in the analysis, “it would take the average worker in AEP’s home state of Ohio 550 years to earn what Fehrman made last year.” While Fehrman’s base salary last year was just above $1.5 million, he was awarded over $29 million in stock awards “intended to motivate Fehrman to ‘create sustainable shareholder value,’ incentivize focus on ‘longer-term results,’ and reduce risk of CEO turnover,” according to the analysis.

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While Fehrman saw this pay increase, the analysis noted AEP customers’ struggles with their bills last year: From June 2024 to May 2025, AEP disconnected Ohio customers over 173,000 times and issued almost 2 million final notices to customers, who carried a total past-due balance of $722 million. 

And the analysis details the disparity between these utility CEOs’ pay—sitting at over $5.2 billion from 2017 to 2025—and average workers’. “Since 2017, average utility CEO compensation has risen 47 percent. This outpaces inflation, which rose 31 percent from 2017 to 2025, and average wage growth for American workers, which has risen 38 percent in the same span,” the analysis reads.

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