A Letter from our President and Chief Executive Officer
To all our stakeholders
Thank you for wanting to learn more about NextEra Energy, the leading provider of electricity to American homes and businesses. We’re a homegrown, American company creating good jobs and revitalizing local economies in nearly every state. And we are helping America compete globally by extending low-cost energy to our customers in Florida and across the country.
We lead an industry that is at an inflection point. Over the next two decades, U.S. power demand growth is expected to increase by approximately 55%. That is an annual growth rate more than six times higher than over the previous two decades. This increase in demand is happening across multiple sectors and is fundamental to U.S. competitiveness. Technology companies are building data and AI centers that are driving an information and intelligence revolution across our economy. Many industrial processes are being electrified. We also expect demand to come from the reshoring of manufacturing to drive American industries and from the continued electrification of homes, as technology continues to disrupt and enhance our daily lives.
We believe this secular shift in demand will require an expansion of low-cost and fast-to-deploy energy solutions – and that means more solar, wind and co-located battery storage. Renewables not only are the lowest-cost and fastest generation technologies to deploy, but also are clean and face few regulatory constraints compared to current alternatives. Renewables do not require fuel other than sunshine and wind – making them energy independent, not subject to fuel price volatility and less impacted by inflation. Because renewables are the best solution to meet much of the rising demand for power and technology, we now expect between 375 gigawatts (GW) and 450 GW of new renewable capacity will be built in the U.S. over the next seven years, compared to more than 140 GW built over the previous seven years.
NextEra Energy was built for just this type of inflection point, as our company has two strong businesses that together lead our industry. Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), the largest electric utility in America by both megawatt-hour sales and number of customers, has demonstrated its expertise in managing growth in a state that welcomes roughly 1,000 new residents every day. NextEra Energy Resources, the world leader in wind- and solar-generated electricity and a world leader in battery storage, has partnered with both power and commercial and industrial customers to meet their growing demand for clean energy projects and the transmission to connect them. Together, our two complementary businesses have experience in every part of the energy value chain. And we have a long track record of designing optimal low-cost, clean power solutions for customers.
Underlying both businesses is a common platform that exists because both businesses are part of a single enterprise that leverages our scale, experience and technology – which we refer to as our SET – to maximize benefits for our customers and shareholders.
Our scale is unmatched in our industry. Today we operate a 38-GW wind, solar and storage portfolio, a 6-GW nuclear fleet and a 27-GW clean natural gas fleet.* We are dedicated to operational excellence across every technology and to continuous improvement in safety and operational efficiency. We know what each technology costs and what we can do to operate each one cost-effectively. We are pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge in all parts of the power generation value chain.
Our experience also is unmatched. We have spent decades building the best team in the business and cultivating a culture to foster innovation, efficiency and growth. We have deep market knowledge from decades of building and operating the largest renewables portfolio in the country. We bring transmission solutions to the table. At FPL, we’re automating, hardening and undergrounding our distribution system and building new transmission to enable new generation. At NextEra Energy Resources, we are a leading competitive transmission provider, building new transmission to enable more renewables, while operating more than 94,000 circuit miles of transmission and distribution lines at a cost 75% lower than the national average. And we have deep customer relationships built over decades in which we have consistently and reliably served them, both at FPL and NextEra Energy Resources.
And our technology is unmatched, as we are harnessing one of the largest data sets in the industry to optimize project development, drive performance and increase returns. We generate more than 560 billion operational data points each day that drive analytical, real-time decision making across our fleet. We use data and analytics daily to operate our FPL fossil fleet, which is the only fossil fleet in America that is operated remotely. In addition, we operate our renewables fleet at FPL and NextEra Energy Resources remotely from our Renewable Operations Control Center in Florida. We’re now using our data and technology to design generative AI solutions across our business to further advance our competitive advantages. And we know how to use all of this to help our customers navigate the many challenges facing their own businesses.
Our SET drives shareholder value across our enterprise and customer value at each of our businesses. At FPL, we bring our SET to the nation’s leading electric utility. We know how to support growth, powering one of the fastest-growing states in the nation. We have expertise across solar, storage, nuclear, fossil and transmission. We deploy innovative solutions and technologies to lower costs for customers. We are experts in managing through disruptive events like hurricanes. We are building the utility of the future and have relationships and mutual respect across the utility paradigm.
At NextEra Energy Resources, we bring our SET to renewables and storage as the world’s leader. We know how to leverage our massive data sets, operating our sites digitally and remotely. We are leveraging AI solutions to pick and operate the best sites. We are experts in renewables development and transmission, supporting our roughly 300-GW pipeline. We can deliver speed-to-market from our existing 38-GW operating footprint.* We have strong customer relationships from years serving power and commercial and industrial customers. And we can offer our customers a systematic solution versus a single renewable project to meet their power demand needs.
We believe the convergence of power and technology is just starting to unfold and that it is driving significantly increasing long-term load demand as our economy electrifies. This power and technology revolution will have a long-term effect on the economy. Like other revolutions before it, there will be twists and turns. Progress is not always linear, but progress is real. And nobody has our long-term opportunity set, our scale, our experience, our technology or our balance sheet.
No company is better positioned than NextEra Energy to help our customers benefit as power and technology converge. We are ready to help all our customers succeed in reaching their own goals. And we look forward to building even stronger relationships with all our stakeholders as the future unfolds for all of us.
Sincerely,
John Ketchum
NextEra Energy President & CEO
