NextEra sees hydrogen as key to deep decarbonization, takes small steps for now
NextEra is eager to lead in the emerging hydrogen arena, earning recognition throughout the industry for the green hydrogen pilot announced last summer. But the company is taking a measured approach to the clean energy resource.
“You’ll see us continue to place small bets to get experience, to build relationships, to gain knowledge, and … in the short term, that won’t add up to a heck of a lot of capital investment opportunity, but it will add up to a tremendous amount of learning and continuing to focus our strategies on where we can add significant amount of value to the infrastructure and the market and ultimately to our shareholders as well,” Kujawa said on Wednesday’s call.
The ability of hydrogen to change the value equation around decarbonization, gives the company “great excitement about the potential for substantial renewables and battery storage deployment knowing that as you continue to deploy more and you find economic forms of long duration storage that continues to be very value accretive to customers both in cost and in the performance of clean energy,” Kujawa added.
Kujawa highlighted NextEra’s hydrogen electrolysis project at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) Okeechobee combined cycle unit as part of the company’s “efforts to introduce further fuel diversity and resiliency into FPL’s generation system.”
In addition to its pilots and partnerships around hydrogen, Kujawa said NextEra recently committed to make a minority investment in a company “that has developed a proprietary process to essentially decarbonize the industrial production of hydrogen at economic prices.”
