NextEra: Offshore Wind is Bad Energy Policy; Bad Business
Seeking Alpha|April 24, 2018
During the April 24, 2018 earnings call, the CEO of NextEra reported the company will not be entering the offshore wind market. Jim Robo called offshore wind "bad energy policy" and "bad business." The full transcript of the call can be accessed at the links on this page. The excerpt of the call pertaining to offshore wind is provided below.
During the April 24, 2018 earnings call, the CEO of NextEra reported the company will not be entering the offshore wind market. Jim Robo called offshore wind "bad energy policy" and "bad business." The full transcript of the call can be accessed at the links on this page. The excerpt of the call pertaining to offshore wind is provided below.
Transcript excerpt addressing offshore wind.
Greg Gordon:
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Second question, one of the things that you guys have not done is just have your focus expands to looking at or bidding on, at least you haven’t publicly disclose any bids on offshore wind, nor have you expanded the breadth of your focus geographically outside North America. Can you comment as to why there isn’t an opportunity on a risk adjusted basis either on offshore wind or outside North America that’s attractive to you?
John Ketchum:
Yes. I’ll turn that question over to Jim.
Jim Robo:
... more [truncated due to possible copyright]So, Greg, just on offshore winds, we work very hard at offshore winds 15 years ago and worked on a project off of Long Island, get very close on …
Transcript excerpt addressing offshore wind.
Greg Gordon:
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Second question, one of the things that you guys have not done is just have your focus expands to looking at or bidding on, at least you haven’t publicly disclose any bids on offshore wind, nor have you expanded the breadth of your focus geographically outside North America. Can you comment as to why there isn’t an opportunity on a risk adjusted basis either on offshore wind or outside North America that’s attractive to you?
John Ketchum:
Yes. I’ll turn that question over to Jim.
Jim Robo:
So, Greg, just on offshore winds, we work very hard at offshore winds 15 years ago and worked on a project off of Long Island, get very close on it. I personally expect when I was running NextEra Energy resources at the time personally spend a lot of time on the development on that project. And fundamentally, development timelines are 5 to 10 years, permitting is uncertain, it’s a -- it is a moon shot in terms of building, in terms of finding people who actually know what they’re doing from a construction standpoint, it's terrible energy policy and that it’s really expensive and even in New England for example.
In the last RFP, Massachusetts turned down several projects that we bid at $0.05 for in solar and you can do -- let me tell you offshore wind in Massachusetts -- the offshore wind RFP in Massachusetts is not going to come in at $0.05. So, it is just -- its bad energy policy and its bad business. And so, we don’t tend to do either those things, and so that’s why we’re not going to be doing offshore wind. In terms of international, this industry has honestly a pretty lousy track record in international and we have plenty of things to keep us busy here in North America we’re going to continue to be focused in primarily U.S. going forward and we’ll be able to continue to grow well just with our focus. I think our investors are not really too excited about us doing anything outside of U.S.
