Nextera Energy beats profit estimates

NEW YORK: Top US renewable power producer Nextera Energy on Friday topped Wall Street estimates for second-quarter profit, helped by higher demand for clean energy.

Record temperatures and high natural gas and coal prices have sent utility bills surging, driving demand for alternative sources of energy like renewablesandbatery-storagesystems,benefiting companies such as Nextera.

US President Joe Biden in June waived tariffs on solar panels imported from some Asian countries for two years, providing a reprieve to the US solar sector that has been under trade department scrutiny over alleged tariff dodging related to goods made in China.

About a week ater the exemption, Nextera lited its adjusted earnings forecasts for 2022 through 2025.

The order backlog of Nextera Energy Resources, the company’s clean energy business, swelled by more than 2,000 megawats (MW) of new projects from the first quarter, across solar (1,200 MW), wind (815 MW), and storage projects (20 MW). Onemegawatcanpowerabout1,000ushomes. The unit’s quarterly adjusted earnings grew 19% to $683 million.

Nextera’s Florida Power & Light (FPL), the nation’s biggest utility, reported a profit of $989 million in the second quarter, up 12% from a year earlier.

As part of FPL’S decarbonization goal, Nextera plans to generate power for the utility mainly through a mix of solar, batery storage, existing nuclear, green hydrogen and other renewable sources by 2045. The utility generated about 70% of its electricity through gas last year.