NextEra Inks $733 Million Wind Purchase in Latest Green Deal
NextEra Energy Inc. agreed to acquire four wind farms from Brookfield Renewable Partners LP for $733 million in the energy giant’s biggest purchase since 2019.
The wind turbines have combined output of almost 400 megawatts and have long-term sales contracts for their power, NextEra said in a statement on Monday.
Three are in California and one is in New Hampshire. NextEra plans to fund the transaction with a combination of cash and debt.
NextEra Energy Partners LP, the subsidiary that is purchasing the assets, is a publicly listed partnership formed by its parent to buy energy projects. The Brookfield deal is its largest since the acquisition of a natural gas pipeline operator about 18 months ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“This deal is a bit unusual because NEP is buying assets from a third-party rather than the parent company,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James. “Other than that, this is a routine, modest-sized acquisition for NEP” that will increase NEP’s generation portfolio by about 7%.
Florida-based NextEra is the world’s biggest provider of wind and solar energy and for a brief span in 2020 surpassed oil titans Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. in market value. The deal with Brookfield is its most recent move into renewables this year, with NextEra working on a plan to electrify school buses, building the world’s biggest solar-powered battery system as well as a solar farm in Iowa.
NextEra was also one of the big U.S. utilities that last week told Texas lawmakers that proposals to mandate winterization of the power grid would unfairly burden wind and solar generators with extra costs.
Units of NextEra Energy Partners fell 0.7% to $73.77 at 9:41 a.m. in New York. The deal is expected to close during the third quarter, subject to regulatory approvals.
Source: Bloomberg
