(Bloomberg) -- NextEra Energy Inc. added 3,000 megawatts — roughly akin to the capacity of three nuclear reactors — of new renewables and storage projects in the second quarter as demand from data centers continues to soar.
The additions include an 860 megawatts agreement for Google data centers, Chief Financial Officer Brian Bolster said Wednesday on NextEra’s earnings call. The company’s renewables and storage origination has reached 22.6 gigawatts, which includes 1,600 megawatts of new projects placed in service since April.
“This marks our second-best origination quarter ever,” Chief Executive Officer John Ketchum said on the call. “These results support our belief that the bulk of the growth demand will be met by a combination of new renewables and battery storage.”
Clean energy development has been turbocharged in the US by rising demand for carbon-free power sources and tax credits from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which benefit NextEra. At the same time, the rise of AI has contributed to the biggest jump in power demand in a generation.
NextEra’s total renewables portfolio with technology and data center customers is now 7 gigawatts. Roughly 3 gigawatts of that already is in service and the rest will be built in the coming years, said Rebecca Kujawa, head of NextEra’s renewable development unit.
NextEra shares rose as much as 5% Wednesday in New York.
(Updates with CEO’s comments in third paragraph and share price move in the last paragraph. A previous version of this story deleted an incorrect reference to record in the headline and first paragraph.)
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