NextEra featured in Journal

The Wall Street Journal turned its spotlight on NextEra Energy, operator of Jay County’s first wind farm, this week.

In a story headlined, “How a Florida Utility Became the Global King of Green Power,” the Journal’s Russell Gold profiled the low-profile company that has quietly become the world’s largest operator of wind and solar farms and the most valuable power company in the United States.

“The Florida company has grown into a green Goliath, almost entirely under the radar, not through taking on heavy debt to expand or by touting its greenness, but by relentlessly capitalizing on government support for renewable energy, in particular the tax subsidies that help finance wind and solar projects around the country,” Gold wrote. “It then sells the output to utilities, many of which must procure power from green sources to meet state mandates.

“NextEra has been careful to build sites only after it has customers lined up, avoiding debt problems that sank rivals such as SunEdison Inc. And it has assiduously avoided the kind of claims of altruistic motives that are common among some green-energy companies.”

The Journal said NextEra has a market capitalization of $74 billion. That’s a far cry from 2001 when the company, then known as Florida Power and Light, had a market capitalization of $10.2 billion and was the 30th largest U.S. power company.

“NextEra has been led for more than 15 years by the same cadre of executives, notably James Robo, a General Electric Co. alumnus who was elevated to chief executive in 2012,” Gold wrote.

In keeping with the company’s low profile, Robo declined to be interviewed by The Journal and NextEra declined to discuss its business for the article.

Bluff Point Wind Energy Center has played a role in NextEra’s growth.

“After regulators in Virginia and West Virginia pushed Appalachian Power Co. to add more wind to its coal-heavy portfolio several years ago, the utility solicited bids for 150 megawatts of renewable energy. Its parent, American Electric Power Co., had limited capital with which to build the farms itself; it was spending several billion dollars installing equipment to clean up its coal fleet,” wrote Gold.

That’s where NextEra stepped in and built the Bluff Point wind farm, selling its power to Appalachian. 

“Appalachian Power effectively contracted 1.1 percent of its sales to NextEra for the next 20 years,” wrote Gold.

In a separate announcement, AT&T said it has entered into an agreement with a subsidiary of NextEra to purchase 300 MW of wind energy from two new wind farm projects in Texas.