Brookfield Renewable agreed to buy a big portfolio of wind and solar farms from Duke Energy Corp. for $2.8 billion in a move intended to boost cash reserves.
(Bloomberg) — Brookfield Renewable agreed to buy a big portfolio of wind and solar farms from Duke Energy Corp. for $2.8 billion in a move intended to boost cash reserves.
Duke expects net proceeds from the transaction to be about $1.1 billion, the company said in a Monday statement. The company also announced an $800 million write-down on the unit, in addition to the $1.3 billion charge it took earlier this year. The unit develops new projects and operates about 3.4 gigawatts of solar, wind and battery storage.
US utilities are racing to unload unregulated power assets outside of their home markets after Wall Street began prioritizing slimmed businesses focused on their core territories. Investors now prefer that utilities invest locally, with returns guaranteed by the passage of spending costs to their customers.
“This is in line with utilities focusing their renewable efforts within their regulated operations,” Paul Patterson, an analyst at Glenrock Associates LLC, said in an interview. Utilities will still invest in clean energy, he said, but they’ll do it within their regulated businesses as opposed to as an independent developer.
“We saw a great opportunity to really focus on our clean energy transition in our regulated states,” company spokesperson Jennifer Garber said in a phone interview. “We’re looking at adding about 30,000 megawatts of renewables by 2035.”
Brookfield Renewable is the flagship clean energy company of Brookfield Corporation, a leading global alternative asset manager with over $825 billion of assets under management. It has almost 90 gigawatts of assets, according to the statement.
American Electric Power Co. last year began a sales process for a renewables portfolio. Soon after, Consolidated Edison Inc. agreed to sell a large clean-power portfolio for $6.8 billion.
(Adds detail on unit and charge in second paragraph, analyst commentary in fourth paragraph and company background in sixth paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.