NextEra Energy is trying to position itself as the electricity source of choice for artificial intelligence.
The power giant’s moves were on display Friday as company executives announced their quarterly earnings. NextEra said it had received approval from Iowa regulators to restart a shuttered nuclear power plant that will sell electricity to Google. In Florida, the number of data centers seeking to connect to the company’s system grew by 2 gigawatts — more than the peak electricity consumption of Orlando’s local utility.
In their biggest move of all, NextEra executives expressed confidence in finalizing the $67 billion acquisition of Dominion Energy, the Virginia-utility at the heart of the country’s data center boom.
NextEra has leaned into its status as the country’s largest power company, with executives using it as a talking point as they attempt to convince Virginia regulators to approve the Dominion deal. The State Corporation Commission, which is reviewing the proposal, recently published a procedural order that will extend the review period from 60 to 180 days.
“Scale matters because it creates efficiencies that compound over time into lower costs, better experience, and stronger outcomes for customers, which has never been more important given the challenges being faced today,” NextEra CEO John Ketchum told investors.
He added later, “There really aren’t that many folks out there building new generation solutions because it takes experience and it takes the ability to have all those vertically integrated skill sets come together, and that is what puts us in a unique position.”
NextEra’s profits in the second quarter rose to $3.14 billion, up from $2.03 billion during the same period last year. Its stock price was down slightly Friday, as its profit margins came in lower than analysts’ expectations.
The dip did little to dent analysts’ long-term view of NextEra’s prospects. Few other companies are as well positioned to meet growing electricity demand, James West, an analyst at Melius Research, wrote in a note to clients.
The company “is structuring itself to be the only company with the balance sheet, supply chain, and operating platform to meet that demand at scale,” he added.
NextEra is the most valuable power company on Wall Street, with a market capitalization around $168 billion. Its subsidiary Florida Power and Light is the country’s largest utility measured by customers. And its development arm, NextEra Energy Resources, is America’s leading renewable energy creator.
Still, the challenges facing NextEra were apparent during Friday’s call. In March, the Trump administration selected the company to build 9.5 gigawatts of new natural gas generation in Pennsylvania and Texas as part of a $550 billion trade deal with Japan. The plants would be co-owned by the U.S. and Japanese governments and built and operated by NextEra.
Company executives said in April that they hoped to finalize the deal within two or three months, but they provided no update on the negotiations Friday.
Ketchum downplayed the lack of progress when asked about it by an analyst, saying, “I wouldn’t read too much into that.”
“When you bring two large nation-states together, things don’t always go according to schedule in terms of getting things done as fast as you might want,” he said.
In Florida, the company said it is now expecting to connect 8 gigawatts of large-scale load to its grid by 2032, up from the 6 gigawatts it had anticipated. The announcement comes at a critical juncture for data centers in Florida.
The state has sought to make itself more attractive to data center developers by adopting a rate structure that makes it easier for the facilities to connect to the grid. It comes as public opposition to the industry is rising in Florida and around the country. Earlier this month, Palm Beach County rejected plans to build a data center that would be served by Florida Power and Light. NextEra executives said the data center had not been included in their anticipated pipeline of new AI projects.
The company’s biggest hurdles may be in Virginia, where its plans to acquire Dominion Energy have been greeted warily by political leaders. Dominion is woven into the social, political and economic fabric of the state and signs of opposition to the deal have been mounting. Clean Virginia, an environmental group, filed a motion with state regulators last week arguing that NextEra’s merger application was incomplete. It came on the heels of pointed questions about the proposed union by Attorney General Jay Jones and Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi, both Democrats.
NextEra executives sought to allay those concerns Friday. They touted their track record at Florida Power and Light, where they said the average residential bill is 30 percent lower than the national average. They argued Virginia consumers would benefit from NextEra’s size, which they claimed would enable Dominion to finance and build new projects for less money. And they stressed that NextEra planned to operate Dominion as a stand-alone entity.
“The interaction at the local level is not going to change,” said Ketchum, the NextEra CEO, adding that Virginians should still expect to see workers in Dominion branded shirts and bucket trucks throughout the state. “We’re going to leverage what Dominion does best locally, and its strong track record of operations.”
