CenterPoint Energy expects to see 14 GW of new demand online through 2030, and has added $4 billion to the utility’s 10-year capital investment plan, company officials said Tuesday in a third-quarter earnings call with analysts.
Total planned capital expenditures through 2035 stand at $70.7 billion, up from $66.7 billion the company announced in July. The company has also accelerated about $1.5 billion of capex into the first half of the plan, helping drive a $4.5 billion increase to planned investment through 2030.
Of CenterPoint’s planned capex, $51.5 billion is on the electric side and $19 billion will go towards the company’s natural gas operations. The remainder will occur at the corporate level.
“This incredible demand is creating a powerful multiplier effect, as large industrial expansions drive broader commercial growth across our service territory,” CenterPoint Chairman, President and CEO Jason Wells said on the earnings call. “Notably, industrial and commercial leasing activity in the Houston area is up more than 30% from last year.”
CenterPoint has received nearly 1 GW of distribution-level load requests in the last year, he added.
The 14 GW of expected demand growth are expected to generate $5 billion in customer savings across Texas over the next 10 years, company officials said.
“To replenish that capacity and sustain the region's competitive advantage for the next wave of demand, earlier this year we began an internal transmission study focused on increasing load serving capacity in three key areas,” Wells said, pointing to import transmission capacity, system stability and intra-regional transmission capacity.
Wells said CenterPoint has identified more than a dozen projects across these areas where investment is needed to add incremental load serving capacity. “This capacity is needed in the near term, as we already have requests for significant additional demand that we anticipate submitting in Batch One next year,” Wells said.
CenterPoint has submitted 17 GW of projects to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ large-load interconnection process and expects 12 GW to be eligible as base load or studied load. The first set of projects to navigate the new process is called Batch Zero, and a Batch One will be opened for applications in summer 2027.
Beyond the utility’s $4 billion capex increase, “we continue to see at least $10 billion of additional investment opportunities through 2035,” driven by transmission infrastructure to support Houston’s growth, resiliency efforts and large load opportunities in Indiana, Wells said.
“These incremental opportunities, combined with the investments announced today reinforce our confidence in delivering sustained double-digit rate-based growth over the course of our 10-year plan,” Wells said.
The utility reported net income of $331 million in the third quarter, or 50 cents/diluted share, compared with 45 cents/diluted share in the same period of 2025. And it extended its expectation for non-GAAP earnings per share growth at the mid-to-high end of its 7% to 9% annual range through 2030.
