America’s Greenest Energy Giant Isn’t Trying to Save the Planet

Clean Supermajor Overtook Fossil Fuel Giant

NextEra briefly surpassed Exxon in market capitalization in early October

Source: Bloomberg

NextEra isn’t a cheerleader for climate action like cleantech stalwarts Sunrun Inc. or Tesla Inc., and its CEO, James Robo, doesn’t tweet about saving the world. Founded as an ordinary Florida utility almost a century ago, the company backed into renewables by taking a stake in early wind farms whose developers owed it money. Since then it has shrewdly used dealmaking, scale, tax credits, and aggressive lobbying to grow into a powerhouse—all while keeping such a low profile that most people have never heard of it.

The market forces that drove down costs for renewable energy, backed by powerful incentives from state governments, have allowed NextEra to prosper even under President Trump. Despite tariffs on solar equipment from China and aggressive federal efforts to boost coal and gas, its profits rose from $2.9 billion in 2016 to $3.8 billion last year.
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Biden plans to revive the fight against global warming abandoned by Trump with an ambitious $2 trillion proposal focused on creating a nationwide emissions-free electricity grid in just 15 years. That will require cooperation from Congress and an unprecedented private-sector build-out of renewable power plants and large-scale batteries. Its implementation would be good news for NextEra, which has wind and solar farms in two dozen states and four Canadian provinces, producing enough power to light up Greece. “These guys are the dominant player,” says Kit Konolige, senior utilities analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “They’re first on the list for anyone who wants to get renewables built.”