Renewable energy demand could triple as electricity consumption surges

Renewable energy demand will triple over the next seven years as data center growth accelerates to facilitate the proliferation of artificial intelligence, NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum said Wednesday.

NextEra added 3,000 megawatts of renewable and storage projects to its order backlog in the second quarter. Of those, 860 megawatts — or 28% — come from agreements with Google to power the tech company’s data centers.

“This marks our second best origination quarter ever,” Ketchum told analysts on the company’s earnings call Wednesday. “These results support our belief that the bulk of the growth demand will be met by a combination of renewables and battery storage.”

NextEra’s business with tech and data center customers currently stands at seven gigawatts of renewable assets in operation and in backlog, said Brian Bolster, NextEra’s chief financial officer.

NextEra stock was up 3.5% in early afternoon trading. It is the largest power company in the S&P utilities sector by market capitalization and operates the largest renewable portfolio in the U.S.

Shares have gained 24% year to date and 12% over the last three months, as investor enthusiasm over the company’s position to meet growing U.S. power demand.

NextEra expects power demand to grow four times faster over the next decades compared to the prior 20 years on demand from data center, manufacturing and the electrification of the economy, Ketchum said.

Consulting firm Rystad Energy recently forecast that data centers and the adoption of electric vehicles alone will result in additional 290 terawatt hours of electricity demand in the U.S. by 2030. That’s equivalent to the entire power demand of Turkey, according to Rystad.

Executives at some of the biggest utilities in the U.S. have warned that failure to meet this demand will jeopardize the nation’s economic growth. Rebecca Kujawa, CEO of NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary NextEra Energy, said it will take time to nail down concrete numbers on exactly how much demand is coming from data centers in particular.

“But there is no escaping the fact that these are very large numbers and numbers that I don’t think any utility across the industry has seen before,” Kujawa said Wednesday. “From a practical standpoint, it’s going to take a couple of years for this really to materialize and utilities to be able to absorb it and serve it.”

Natural gas is also expected to play a key role in meeting power demand, though there is an ongoing debate about how the power mix will break down between gas and renewables. Producers and pipeline operators have argued that renewables, which are dependent on sun and wind conditions, will need gas as backup to ensure reliable power.

Alan Armstrong, CEO of pipeline operator Williams Companies, told CNBC last week the U.S. risks falling behind in the AI race if it doesn’t embrace natural gas as a power source.

Ketchum said natural gas has an important role to play as a bridge fuel during the energy transition. NextEra owns and operates a natural gas fleet in Florida. But the CEO said renewables come at a lower cost and are faster to deploy.

Building new natural gas generation is “more expensive in most states, is subject to fuel price volatility, and takes considerable time to deploy given the need to get gas delivered to the generating unit and the three- to four-year waiting period for gas turbines,” Ketchum said.

With power demand expected to surge, there is growing interest in nuclear energy as a source of reliable, carbon free energy. Ketchum indicated Wednesday that NextEra is considering restarting the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Palo, Iowa, though it would require a thorough assessment. The plant ceased operations in 2020.

“We would only do it if we could do it in a way that is is essentially risk free with plenty of mitigants around the approach,” Ketchum said Wednesday. “There are a few things that we would have to work through but yes — we are we are looking at it.”

NextEra is rated as a buy equivalent by 70% of Wall Street analysts, with an average price target of $79.12 per share, suggesting nearly 10% upside from Tuesday’s close of $72.11.