What I keep hearing from Fortune 500 CEOs: ‘We have no idea what we’re actually paying for power’

In the past 18 months, I’ve talked to dozens of CFOs about energy costs and keep hearing a version of the same thing: “We have no idea what we’re actually paying, or why the number keeps changing.” 

One told me they missed their quarterly earnings per share (EPS) target because of a single regional utility’s price change.

Energy used to be a fixed line item you budgeted once a year and forgot. Now it’s one of the fastest-moving costs on the P&L and the volatility that used to be a once-a-season weather event has become the baseline.

Commercial electricity prices increased by nearly 6% annually from 2020 to 2025, significantly outpacing the standard 2%–3% budgeting estimate used by most businesses. And power costs in PJM, the largest wholesale grid in the U.S., jumped 54% between 2024 and 2025, costing businesses and consumers $23 billion more than the previous year.

The stakes are enormous for large enterprises. A Fortune 100 company running a roughly $200 million buffer on their EPS could have an energy spend of $1 billion a year and a 5%-to-10% miss on that budget can take a large portion of the buffer — enough to send a quarter sideways.

Why energy landed on the CFO’s desk

The intelligence revolution that everyone is racing to win runs on electricity, and electricity is no longer cheap, abundant, or predictable. The grid is aging, older baseloads like coal are retiring faster than firm replacement comes online, and demand is surging, driven by data centers, electric fleets, reshored manufacturing, and building electrification. And all of this power is going onto the same grid stores, plants,........

© Fortune