Who owns PSE, and how it came to be
Puget Sound Energy traces its roots to gas lamps in 1873 and a Boston engineering firm’s 1912 roll-up of Seattle’s streetcar and power companies. For most of its life it was a publicly traded Washington company. Since February 2009 it has been privately held by a consortium of infrastructure investors, today six pension and asset-management funds based in Canada, the Netherlands and Australia.
Who owns Puget Holdings LLC
Approximate stakes after the Feb 2022 transaction
Puget Holdings → Puget Intermediate Holdings → Puget Equico → 100% of Puget Energy → 100% of PSE. The fiscal 2025 Form 10-K names the six owners without percentages; stakes are from the 2019 10-K and trade-press reports of the 2022 sale of CPP Investments’ 31.6% to Macquarie and Ontario Teachers’ in equal halves. Worth double-checking.
Six funds, no public shareholders
| Owner | Based in | Stake |
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The 2008 UTC approval order required PSE to keep its headquarters in its service territory and to seat at least three Washington residents on its board. Today the Puget Energy board includes nominees from BCI (2), OMERS (2), Ontario Teachers’ and Macquarie alongside former Governor Christine Gregoire, CEO Mary Kipp and independent directors.
Why it matters for rates. PSE’s owners are paid through an authorized “return on equity” set by the UTC, currently 9.8–9.9% and requested at 10.8%. Public Counsel calculates dividends of $175.9 million in 2024 and $62.9 million in 2025, and estimates that about 12% of an electric bill flows to investors. Publicly owned utilities have no shareholders to pay, borrow tax-free, and (for most) get preferential access to federal Columbia River hydro.
150 years in 20 moments
Sources: HistoryLink, Snohomish PUD, PSE, SEC filings, UTC orders.
Seattle Gas Light Company, founded by Dexter Horton, Arthur Denny and John Collins, lights 42 homes and 5 streets. It is PSE’s oldest ancestor.
A predecessor builds the world’s first fully underground hydro plant. PSE still runs it (54 MW).
The Boston engineering firm forms Seattle Electric Company, then consolidates nearly every private power and streetcar company in greater Seattle as Puget Sound Traction, Light & Power (1912). Renamed Puget Sound Power & Light in 1919.
Initiative 1 lets counties form public utility districts with elected commissioners, revenue bonds and eminent domain. It passes 54–46, carrying 28 of 39 counties. The public-vs-private power war begins.
Snohomish County PUD forms in 1936 (13,850 to 10,463). After a decade of litigation reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, it takes over Puget Power’s Snohomish system on Sept 1, 1949 for about $16 million. By 1948 Puget had sold perimeter properties to eight PUDs.
Seattle voters approve City Light’s purchase of Puget Power’s in-city assets by 724 votes (65,616 to 64,892). The $26.8 million sale closes in March 1952. In 1953 Puget’s board rejects takeover offers and stays independent.
Seattle Gas merges into Washington Natural Gas; pipeline gas reaches Puget Sound.
Puget Power partners with Montana Power on the Colstrip coal plant: 50% of Units 1 & 2, later 25% of Units 3 & 4 (1984, 1986).
After Three Mile Island, Puget abandons its proposed Skagit County reactors.
Puget Sound Power & Light merges with Washington Energy (Washington Natural Gas) to form PSE, a combined electric and gas utility.
A consortium led by Australia’s Macquarie Infrastructure Partners agrees to buy Puget Energy for $30 a share, $7.4 billion including debt. Partners: Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (28%), BC Investment Management (14%), Alberta Investment Management (6%), and Macquarie entities (51% combined).
The Attorney General’s consumer advocate refuses to sign the settlement, calling it an “inferior choice.” The UTC approves the leveraged buyout on Dec 30, 2008 with ring-fencing, $88–100 million in rate credits over ten years, a Washington-resident board requirement and a Bellevue headquarters condition. One commissioner dissents.
Puget Holdings closes the purchase. PSE is delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
Macquarie’s entities exit; OMERS, PGGM (Netherlands), AIMCo and BCI buy in. Post-deal: CPPIB 31.6%, OMERS 23.9%, BCI 20.9%, AIMCo 13.6%, PGGM 10%.
The former El Paso Electric chief succeeds Kimberly Harris.
With 65 UTC commitments, Macquarie Asset Management and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan buy CPP Investments’ 31.6% stake, half each.
UTC approves +11.5% electric for 2025 and +6.4% for 2026, raising ROE to 9.8–9.9%. In March it denies PSE’s bid for another $215 million as “unjust and unreasonable.”
PSE’s Colstrip share passes to NorthWestern Energy at no cost. The same day, five UTC orders raise the typical electric bill 12.18% and gas 6.68%.
A three-year plan: +16.75% residential electric in 2027, +3.76% in 2028, +8.81% in 2029, and a 10.8% ROE. The Attorney General files opposing testimony July 30. Hearings Sept 29 and Oct 7.
Kitsap PUD asks voters for authority to study taking over PSE’s 130,000-customer electric system, the first county-wide public-power vote in PSE territory since Thurston in 2012 and 2020.
- Electric customers
- 1,251,452 (1.10M residential)
- Gas customers
- 881,176
- Revenue
- $5.42 billion (electric $3.89B, gas $1.46B)
- PSE net income
- $458.7M (up from $346.1M in 2024)
- Employees
- ≈3,412 (1,053 union)
- Owned generation
- 3,583 MW
- Headquarters
- 355 110th Ave NE, Bellevue
- CEO
- Mary E. Kipp (since Jan 2020)
- Regulator
- WA Utilities & Transportation Commission
CEO total compensation from the Summary Compensation Table: $6.57M (2023), $6.40M (2024), $9.20M (2025, of which $7.81M was non-equity incentive pay). Median employee: $169,014. Ratio ≈54:1.
Does the CEO’s raise actually move your bill?
Barely. It is a fair thing to be angry about, but the arithmetic says executive pay is a rounding error next to the things that really set your rate.
Mary Kipp’s total compensation rose from $6.40 million in 2024 to $9.20 million in 2025, a $2.8 million increase. PSE serves about 2.13 million electric and gas accounts. If every dollar of her 2025 pay were charged to customers and spread evenly, it would cost each account about $4.32 a year, or 36 cents a month. The raise alone works out to about 11 cents a month. All five named executive officers together are in the neighbourhood of $16 million, roughly 63 cents a month per account.
Set that against the January 2026 rate orders, which added $16.84 a month to a typical electric bill, or PSE’s 2027 request of about $28 more. Or against the $175.9 million in dividends paid to the owners in 2024, about $6.88 a month per account. Or against the ROE question: Public Counsel’s proposal to cut the authorized return from 9.9% to 8.17% (and shift some costs to shareholders) would save customers up to $695 million in 2027, about $27 a month per account. The CEO’s entire pay package is about 1.3% of that.
And most of it probably isn’t in your rates anyway. $7.81 million of the $9.20 million was incentive pay. Washington regulators generally disallow incentive compensation tied to financial results (earnings, ROE, shareholder returns) from rates, on the theory that shareholders, not customers, should pay for performance that benefits shareholders. Public Counsel’s 2026 testimony argues for pushing more executive pay, investor-relations and insurance costs onto shareholders. How much of PSE’s executive pay is actually recovered in rates is not published; the chart shows the maximum possible effect.
Why it still matters. A 44% raise in a year when customers absorbed a 12% increase is a governance signal about whose interests the board serves, and it is the kind of fact that moves legislators. Maryland and Minnesota adopted utility executive-pay limits in 2026. But if your goal is a lower bill, the levers are the return on equity, the $3.2 billion capital plan, the gas-plant contracts, and power costs, not the CEO’s paycheck.
What each item costs a typical account per month
Dollars per month, spread evenly across 2.13M electric + gas accounts (calc)
CEO pay and dividends are 10-K and Public Counsel figures divided by 2,132,628 accounts (1,251,452 electric plus 881,176 gas; households with both are counted twice, which makes the per-account figures slightly generous). The Jan 2026 and 2027 items are UTC-stated typical-bill changes at 800 kWh. The Public Counsel item is $695M ÷ 2.13M ÷ 12. Executive-pay bars assume 100% recovery in rates, which is the upper bound. Worth double-checking.
Four fights shaping the next decade
The gas question: HB 1589 and Initiative 2066
HB 1589 (2024) applies only to PSE and requires a single Integrated System Plan for electricity and gas, due April 1, 2027, plus electrification programs. Initiative 2066, backed by the Building Industry Association, passed in Nov 2024 with 51.7% to repeal those provisions and guarantee gas service. A King County judge struck it down in March 2025; the Washington Supreme Court heard argument Jan 22, 2026. No ruling had been published as of Sept 11, 2026. The UTC deferred PSE’s accelerated gas-plant depreciation pending the outcome. Check for a ruling.
Wildfire costs
PSE has spent more than $200 million on wildfire mitigation since 2024 (covered wire, undergrounding, cameras, vegetation) and recovers it through a tracker on bills. Its Public Safety Power Shutoff program can pre-emptively cut power in Kittitas (Cle Elum, Ellensburg) and Skagit (Concrete, Marblemount) with 48 hours’ notice. Public Counsel objects to PSE shifting wildfire and construction-overrun risk onto customers.
Clean energy compliance
CETA requires carbon-neutral electricity by 2030 and 100% clean by 2045. PSE reports 50.6% clean over 2022–2025 and 3,880 MW of compliant capacity, but is adding 783 MW of gas tolling contracts and asking to build two gas peakers. Earthjustice, NW Energy Coalition, Sierra Club and Climate Solutions are contesting the 2026 rate case on those grounds.
The regulator itself
The UTC has three governor-appointed commissioners: Chair Brian Rybarik (appointed Jan 2025 by Gov. Ferguson), Ann Rendahl (term ends Jan 1, 2027) and Milt Doumit. Former chair Dave Danner resigned in 2024 after a Cascade PBS investigation found he and Rendahl violated agency policies. The Legislature is also weighing performance-based regulation that would tie PSE’s profit to outcomes rather than spending; comments are due Oct 9, 2026.