PG&E’s Top Boss Receives Total Performance Salary That’s Over $50 Million
PG&E’s top boss took on a total salary package in 2021 that topped $50 million at a time when the embattled utility came under scrutiny for a decade of disasters linked to raging wildfires and explosions .
PG&E Chief Executive Officer Patricia Poppe reaped $51.2 million in total direct compensation last year, according to documents filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
FILE – This 2011 file photo shows Patricia Poppe, then-Vice President of Customer Operations at Consumer Energy in Jackson, Mich. Poppe is the CEO of Northern California utility PG&E. (Nick Dantamaro/Jackson Citizen Patriot via AP, FILE)
By comparison, the median salary for CEOs of companies that make up the S&P 500 index was $15.5 million in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, according to a survey by Executive Paywatch, a union-crafted website.
Over the past 10 years, starting in September 2010, PG&E instruments have caused a fatal gas explosion in San Bruno and have also been linked to deadly wildfires in Northern California.
Among the fatalities in the last decade:
– In 2010, a PG&E gas pipeline exploded and caused a fireball, killing eight people and destroying the San Bruno neighborhood.
– 2015 Butte Fire killed two people in Amador County and Calaveras County. The reason for this was the contact between a tree and a PG&E power line.
– 2017 Wine Country Fire. PG&E Equipment was involved in a series of inferno with several fatal fires.
– 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County. PG&E Equipment was determined to cause a deadly wildfire that killed 85 people and destroyed the City of Paradise.
– 2021 Dixie Fire in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta and Tehama counties. PG&E equipment was found to have caused a massive fire that became California’s second largest wildfire.
Pope’s $51.2 million total salary package was primarily enriched by $41.2 million in awards of stock, annual SEC filings show. The CEO of PG&E was also awarded a $6.6 million bonus and a base salary of $1.3 million.
According to regulatory filings, PG&E Chief Customer Officer Marlene Santos cut $7.5 million in total pay, a compensation package that included $5.1 million in stock awards.
SEC documents show Adam Wright, chief operating officer of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a utility arm of PG&E, was awarded $6.5 million in total pay, including $4.2 million in stock awards.
Pacific Gas & Electric’s chief risk officer Sumeet Singh received $1.6 million in total executive compensation.
“In 2021, we launched our leadership of PG&E with a shared vision and a common goal: to generate the right results for our customers, communities and stakeholders; and to ensure that our gas and electric systems operate safely for all,” Poppe and PG&E Board Chairman Robert Flexon said in a preliminary statement to the annual proxy filing that they jointly signed. Did it
William Smith, former interim CEO of PG&E, landed $361,600 in total executive compensation. However, Smith also made a profit of $1.5 million in 2021 from the sale of previously awarded stock options.
SEC filings show, Popeye did not exercise any stock sales in 2021.
PG&E’s opening statement to the annual proxy filing claims the company has established a leadership group that can dramatically reduce the wildfire and explosion disasters that plagued the company with the San Bruno eruption a decade ago. will help to
“We are taking bold steps to reduce risk and make our systems safer every day,” Pope and Flexon wrote in the statement. “We look forward to joining with policymakers and state leaders to engineer and build our electric and gas systems for a cleaner, safer and more reliable energy future.”
