HBO last week released The Dark Money Game, featuring two films – Ohio Confidential and Wealth of the Wicked, both directed by Alex Gibney. 

The films investigate the shadowy world of political donations and fundraising fifteen years after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, which enabled unlimited spending by hidden sources on many political campaigns. 

Through two separate stories, the films reveal how an untraceable web of money from wealthy individuals and corporations representing business interests or religious agendas flows through non-profits and super PACs (political action committees) to support candidates and political movements.

In Ohio Confidential, Gibney looks at the case of how Ohio’s largest public corruption case was accidentally uncovered by federal investigators.

FBI wiretap recordings ultimately unravel a conspiracy involving a secret $61 million-dollar slush fund for Ohio’s Speaker of the House to secure power in order to pay back corporate donors with a billion-dollar corporate bailout at the expense of the state’s taxpayers.

  As executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, David Pomerantz has been tracking the utility industry for more than nine years now. Much of his focus is on how utility companies skirt the laws that govern their operation.

“We document where utilities break the law,” Pomerantz told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “They break the law in many areas, but one area in particular in recent years has been public corruption laws. There is a documentary coming out on it on HBO in a few days. It’s a big story, at least in our area of concern. It’s about the FirstEnergy public corruption scandal in Ohio, one of the biggest in the history of the country. The utility company used $60 million in payments through a network of dark money groups to basically buy the Speaker of the House in Ohio and their top regulator at the public utility commission.” 

“There was a similar scandal in Illinois. There was a big scandal in Florida, where the utility, through a network of proxy groups, ran candidates with the same last name as Democrats in state races to siphon votes away from them in close elections. It’s called the ghost candidate scandal.”

“This happens all the time. It’s the basic nature of the utility’s model. The most important thing for a utility to do is to control its regulators and the political system upstream of the regulator. And that gets them in all kinds of trouble.” 

“These cases didn’t happen because federal investigators were investigating utilities. The utility crimes that were revealed were incidental to other investigations. Federal investigators stumbled onto the FirstEnergy case. Imagine what we’d find if more federal or state prosecutors and investigators actually looked at the utility sector proactively. Imagine if they had a utility industry task force. Maybe we should take a proactive look at them. I would encourage them to do that. And if they want to reach out to EPI or ideas on where to start looking, we’d be thrilled to speak with them.”

The utility industry’s overground lobbying was working for decades. Why did they have to go underground?

“It’s a story of greed and ambition overwhelming common sense. You are exactly right – utilities do quite well through perfectly legal means in our very permissive campaign finance system. It’s very hard to break campaign finance laws in the United States because they are so porous. We have a perfectly legal system of bribery. Utilities are very well versed in the ins and outs of that system. Why would they risk all of that?” 

“Ohio is a state that does have a restructured generation market. That means they were subject to some competition for their nuclear and coal plants. That was putting pressure on the company to figure out how to get those assets, which were losing money, to be propped up by government subsidies. There was financial pressure to deliver public policy to bail out their bad investments.” 

“The troubles arise when they start using these non profit 501(c)(4) groups. It’s legal for a utility to route money through these groups and for these groups to do political advocacy. But it’s secretive. And when they do it in secrecy, the people they turn to effectuate those plans are not lawyers with degrees. They are just trying to achieve the political goals of the company. And they are not running everything by lawyers. And because it’s secret, it fosters this risky behavior.” 

Have you put out a report on corruption in the utility industry?

“We have done a number of reports that look at it. For example, we have documented their legal political advocacy. They are not supposed to embed those costs in customers’ bills. We have done a couple of reports on that. We have written extensively on the Ohio case.”

“A lot of our work ends up focusing on their political power and influence. By and large, utilities are lobbying against a rapid and equitable transition to clean energy. And that political power and influence is also just generally bad for our democracy. Utility companies are often the most prolific campaign contributors and lobbyists in their states.”

“They are powerful companies. And the way they leverage their power is not good for the healthy, democratic functioning of our institutions.”

“We do many things that investigative reporters may do. But we don’t think of ourselves as journalists. We think of ourselves as watchdogs.”

By percentage, what are the top generators of electricity?

“In 2023, fossil fuels were about 60 percent of total generation,” Pomerantz said. “Of that, 43 percent is methane gas – also referred to as natural gas. And 16 percent coal. There is still a little petroleum oil – but it’s less than one percent. Nuclear is 19 percent. Wind now provides about 10 percent. Solar in 2023 was four percent. Hydropower is six percent.” 

What would your ideal be for those percentages?”

“The end goal is to generate electricity without polluting the environment with carbon. The question is – how to get from here to there and what should the final mix look like.” 

“Most good faith economists and engineers would say – we can have a low cost electric grid where the majority of generation comes from wind and solar power, helped by batteries. The argument comes from what the percentages look like. Should it be 70 percent, 80 percent, 60 percent, 90 percent?” 

“From a technical perspective, you could get 100 percent of electricity from wind, solar and batteries – with nuclear power and a bit of hydro – both of which are carbon free. Doing just that would probably be prohibitively expensive, or very expensive. And then there is geothermal energy. That’s half a percent right now, but it’s growing quickly. And it’s not variable.”

“The challenge with just wind and solar is obvious – the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. You need other complementary sources often referred to as clean, firm power. They don’t pollute. They don’t create carbon. But they are firm. They can be there when you need them. And geothermal is clean, firm power. Batteries are another. Potentially more nuclear power, although there are real economic challenges to that.” 

“This is what people argue over. If you asked people ten years ago, they would have said that the idea of a fully decarbonized grid with no natural gas at all is a total pipe dream – impossible, a fantasy. That is not what people say anymore. Now it seems quite possible. And there are places in the world that are getting quite close.” 

“Now the questions are – what are the energy sources that can step up and complement wind and solar and batteries at those very high levels? Even five years ago I don’t think anybody could give the wrap on geothermal, which now appears much more real.” 

“The United States is incredible at innovating technology. And that’s true of the energy sector also. This is changing all the time. There is a lot of promise.”

Could the utility regulators get us to where we need to go as quickly as we need to go?

“Yes, they probably can. I define where we need to go as an electricity system that is safe, reliable, produces no carbon and is affordable. Can the public utility commissions do that? They can. But they are creatures of our political system. But even if you had the best utility regulator who wanted to push the utility in that direction, they would need support from the Governor who appoints them in the 38 or 39 states they are in. They would need some support from the legislature.” 

“One thing few understand is how much power the public utility commissions have to do that. Their powers are pretty broad. A lot of states have passed laws making explicitly clear that the commission’s remit isn’t just to keep costs low, but also to address these climate and environmental issues.” 

“And even if the legislatures haven’t made that explicitly clear, if all the PUC wants to do is give the customers the lowest possible rates, most of the time, that actually will align with moving away from fossil fuels and moving toward clean energy. Clean energy has gotten so inexpensive, it’s one of the miracles of the modern economy. If they are just trying to keep people’s bills low, they should be taking a good hard look at whether the utility should be operating coal plants, which are money losers economically for ratepayers. And they certainly should also be looking at whether the utilities should be building new gas plants as opposed to wind, solar and storage.”

Why isn’t it happening?

“A big reason it’s not happening is the political power and influence of the incumbents, the regulated investor owned utilities.” 

Why don’t they want it to happen?

“Some of them, through structural economic reasons, prefer coal or gas.” 

“How do utilities make money? It’s not by selling more electricity. It’s instead by making capital investments. The utility goes to the regulator and says – here are all the things we spend money on. It’s called a rate case. They get to recover pass-through costs – things like fuel and labor. They don’t get to make money on it. But if they want to build a power plant, they get those costs back from ratepayers, plus a profit margin determined by the regulator. It’s usually around ten percent.” 

But they could get the same return on clean energy infrastructure.

“They absolutely could. And some do. There are some reasons they prefer to do it via gas right now. One reason is that the gas investments happen in bigger chunks. If you can get a gas plant built, it’s even better. You can show Wall Street  – look at all of this capital expense that we just got approved.”

“There are some other reasons also. The utilities are very conservative. It’s a cultural hallmark of a monopoly. They don’t like change. They don’t like innovating. And they like to do things the way they have always done them. And the way they have always done things is building big, centralized fossil fuel plants and running a one way electrical grid where they make all this electricity at big plants, they send it out to customers and they get their ten percent profit off their capital investments.”

“Could they equally make money by building a much more modular, two way flexible grid where they are making capital expenditures on transmission and distribution upgrades, and wind and solar farms? Yes, they absolutely could. Some utilities are closer to that vision than others. But it’s a massive amount of change. And companies are not particularly comfortable with change. And many of them are making money hand over fist right now.”

“If you say to a utility company executive – hey, you could make just as much money doing it with a clean energy system, they’ll say  – well, we are making tons of money right now, why should we monkey around with that?”

“In states where the state politics have moved to wanting to undergo a clean energy transition, some of the utilities have spent years fighting that and they no longer do. They arrived at the conclusion that they can’t win that fight politically, although they tried for much of the 2010s.” 

“But they did try to get a concession from regulators – that the dividends they make off the new energy system should flow to their investors on Wall Street rather than back to ratepayers.” 

How does EPI come down on the nuclear power debate?

“We don’t have a formal position on it. The nuclear power we have in the system now, which provides about 20 percent of our electricity today, that’s pretty good. If we can keep it online running safely and reliably, which we have a pretty good track record of doing for a long time, we should do that.”

“As for building new nuclear power plants right now, it’s really expensive and it’s a terrible deal for ratepayers. It’s such a terrible deal, that it’s not happening. The only way utilities have said they will build a new nuclear plant is if all the risks of cost overruns goes on ratepayers or federal taxpayers, but not on shareholders. They will only do it on the condition that the cost overruns are publicly subsidized. Nuclear is carbon free power. But there are better and cheaper ways of getting carbon free power.”

I noticed that your former employer Greenpeace has a different view. Greenpeace says nuclear power is dirty, dangerous and expensive. “Say no to new nukes. Nuclear energy has no place in a clean, safe, sustainable future.”

“I will let them speak for themselves on that,” Pomerantz said.

[For the complete q/a format Interview with David Pomerantz, 39 Corporate Crime Reporter 16(12), April 21, 2025, print edition only.]