Dive Brief:
- NextEra Energy Resources will develop a 4.3 GW natural gas generation hub in southwest Pennsylvania and a 5.2 GW hub in Anderson County, Texas, as part of the same $550 billion trade deal with Japan that is enabling Japan’s SoftBank Group and AEP Ohio to develop 10 GW of new generation in Ohio.
- The deal with Japan also includes an agreement for GE Vernova Hitachi, an advanced nuclear developer formed as a joint venture between General Electric and Japan’s Hitachi, to develop 3 GW of the company’s BWRX-300 small modular reactors in Tennessee and Alabama.
- The Texas project will cost $16 billion, the Pennsylvania project will cost $17 billion, and the nuclear project will cost up to $40 billion, according to a Friday release from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Department of Energy, which announced the project on DOE land in Ohio, did not immediately respond to questions about the broader deal, including whether the projects in Pennsylvania and Texas would also be built on federal property.
Dive Insight:
The Texas and Pennsylvania projects will be built and operated by NextEra, the company said Friday, but jointly owned by Japan and the U.S. “as a structure of the joint trade agreement.”
The hub in Pennsylvania will support up to 3.5 GW of large load demand, “connect to existing interstate natural gas pipelines within the Marcellus and Utica shale region and interconnect with the [PJM Interconnection] regional transmission network,” Commerce said.
The Texas power hub will be capable of serving up to 5 GW of large load demand, located in Electric Reliability Council of Texas territory and will take “advantage of East Texas's abundant natural gas supply and strong transmission infrastructure to deliver power at scale,” Commerce said.
The nuclear development “aligns with the U.S. energy dominance agenda by expanding domestic power generation, enabling long-term national energy security,” Commerce said. “Nuclear power from SMRs would fuel industrial growth by adding firm, dispatchable capacity.”
In a Monday note, investment bank Jefferies said that U.S. nuclear deployment of both conventional reactors and small modular reactors remains “dependent on federal and allied support. Thursday's announcements reinforce this and highlight the [administration’s] commitment to nuclear.”
The 10 GW of generation that SoftBank plans to develop includes 9.2 GW of natural gas generation and will be connected to the local grid to power 10 GW of data center development at the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, the U.S. Department of Energy said Friday.
“The investment is subject to negotiation and execution of definitive documents by NextEra Energy and various constituents, as well as NextEra Energy's completion of development, construction and commissioning of the selected projects,” NextEra said.
Jefferies noted that the NextEra projects are “contingent on securing power customer offtake — i.e. hyperscalers.”
NextEra said the projects are “designed to support growing electricity demand, strengthen the U.S. industrial base and serve large‑scale users, including data centers and advanced manufacturing.”
A memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Japan about the deal said that the U.S. “intends, where feasible, to arrange leases for United States federal land, access, water, power and/or energy to projects underlying Investments as well as seeks to arrange off-take arrangements.”
A representative for NextEra declined to comment on the deal beyond what was in the news releases from the company and the Department of Commerce. PJM and ERCOT could not be reached for comment about the planned projects.
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify what information was requested from the Department of Energy.
