NextEra is expanding its gas generation via a partnership with GE Vernova, CEO John Ketchum said on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call today. But even so, the developer is also doubling down on clean energy — and looking to revive one previously shuttered nuclear plant.
While NextEra in recent years has become the world’s largest renewable power company, it also already has an enormous gas generation portfolio already. And Ketchum said that he sees the two resources as mutually beneficial.
As one of the earnings call slides summarized, “we believe the most economic answer to America’s power needs is to build renewables for energy and storage and gas-fired generation for capacity.”
The framework agreement with GE Vernova could support “multiple gigawatts” for data centers, manufacturing, and electrification of industry, Ketchum added, “as well as serve investor-owned utilities, municipalities, cooperatives, and commercial and industrial customers.”
That said, those gas projects will take years to come online. The option of new gas-fired generation to meet record load growth “won’t be available at scale until 2030,” Ketchum said, and even then “only in certain pockets of the U.S.” And costs are rising, especially in light of supply and labor challenges.
Renewables are still the best option for getting new megawatts onto the grid, and fast. The company’s renewables developer subsidiary NextEra Energy Resources had a record year for renewables and storage origination, adding more than 12 gigawatts to its backlog in 2024 and 3.3 GW in the fourth quarter alone.
By the end of 2027, NextEra Energy Resources expects to be operating a 75-GW portfolio.
“Renewables are here today,” said Ketchum. “You can build a wind project in 12 months, a storage facility in 15, and, you know, a solar project in 18 months.” And given rapid and largely unanticipated load growth, he added, “we need shovels in the ground today because our customers need the power right now.”
This is a posture that utilities are echoing. As TD Cowen analysts summarized in today’s weekly report for investors, “America needs power now and we don’t see utilities shifting wholesale to gas given the timing needs as well as [levelized cost of electricity] of many renewables.”
This comes mere days after President Donald Trump’s declaration of an “energy emergency” to boost fossil fuels, geared toward unleashing the executive’s emergency powers. The irony, of course, is that since 2019, the country has been a net exporter of energy, and in 2023 natural gas exports reached a record high. The challenge of getting more energy online is complicated, but the main problem is a lack of transmission, and the terawatts of clean energy sitting in interconnection queues.
Ketchum said that NextEra is in the rare position of having “excess transmission capacity” and “nearly 30 GW of stand-alone storage interconnection queue positions,” which means that the company can “dramatically” speed up deployments, as compared with its competitors.
In response to an analyst question about whether NextEra will develop gas generation behind the meter as well, Rebecca Jones Kujawa, who is president and CEO of NextEra Energy Resources, said that NextEra has had conversations with customers about the possibility for mega-scale projects. However, she expressed doubt that behind-the-meter gas would be prevalent, given customer and utility needs.
“It can’t be underestimated how much this industry has changed in a very short amount of time, in really the last 15 to 18 months,” Kujawa said. “We’ve seen a lot of increase in demand for natural gas,” she added, especially from hyperscalers interested in pairing the fossil fuel with renewables.
Another option that NextEra is exploring: restarting a shuttered nuclear plant. The company closed the Duane Arnold nuclear facility in Palo, Iowa in 2020, but now aims to revive it in light of demand for clean firm power from customers.
The company had previously teased a Duane Arnold restart, but said today that it has taken the first step, just this week asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a licensing change. The company is aiming to get the 600-megawatt reactor back in operation as soon as 2028 — an ambitious and likely costly timeline.
In this respect, NextEra is part of a wider trend. In September, Microsoft announced plans to spend $16 billion to restart a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. And just this week the South Carolina utility Santee Cooper announced that it’s aiming to restart construction on two reactors, and is seeking bids.
Much of the demand for this revived capacity comes courtesy of hyperscalers with deep pockets, looking to build and power new data centers, and fast. Overall, Ketchum said the company expects demand to increase by 80% in the next five years, and sixfold in the next 20 years.
NextEra recorded $5.39 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, missing analyst expectations. That said, in light of the GE Vernova and Duane Arnold news and overall estimates of enduring load growth, shares got a boost.
