CompanyGraph
NextEra Energy, Inc.
NEE · NYSE Arca · United States
Runs Florida's largest electric utility and uses its steady income to build wind and solar farms across North America.
NextEra Energy runs Florida Power & Light, a state-granted monopoly that serves around six million Florida customers who have no legal option to go elsewhere, and uses the predictable cash that monopoly generates to fund the construction of wind and solar farms across North America. Because the Florida Public Service Commission guarantees FPL a return on every dollar invested in its grid, those cash flows are stable enough to act as internal project finance — NextEra Energy Resources can start building a wind or solar farm before outside investors are brought in, which lets it move through interconnection queues faster than developers who have to fully pre-finance each project from scratch. Those queue positions, accumulated over decades at the best wind and solar sites across the continent, are themselves a barrier that no rival can simply buy its way into. The whole structure depends on Florida cash flows arriving on schedule, so if a major hurricane destroys FPL's grid assets at the same moment the regulator decides to limit how much of those costs can be passed on to customers, the funding engine for the renewable pipeline breaks down precisely when repair bills are at their highest.
How does this company make money?
Florida Power & Light earns a regulated return on every dollar it invests in its grid and power plants — the Florida Public Service Commission sets rates that allow the company to recover those costs plus a set profit margin. NextEra Energy Resources earns money separately by selling electricity under long-term power purchase agreements, selling power into wholesale electricity markets, and selling renewable energy certificates to utilities and companies that need to prove they used clean power.
What makes this company hard to replace?
Florida utility customers have no legal option to choose a different electricity provider — state regulation gives FPL the exclusive right to serve its territory, so switching is simply not permitted. Corporate and wholesale customers who buy renewable power from NextEra Energy Resources are locked into contracts that run 15 to 25 years, with financial penalties for leaving early, and there are very few other suppliers able to deliver renewable generation at the same scale.
What limits this company?
Florida Power & Light can spend money on grid upgrades whenever it chooses, but it cannot collect more revenue until the Florida Public Service Commission approves new rates — and that approval process moves on the commission's schedule, not the company's. That gap between spending and earning controls how fast the regulated income grows, which in turn controls how much cash NextEra Energy Resources has available each year to commit to new wind and solar projects.
What does this company depend on?
NextEra cannot operate without nuclear fuel assemblies for its Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear plants, natural gas delivered through interstate pipeline capacity, wind turbines supplied by Vestas and GE, tax-equity investors who co-finance individual renewable projects, and the regional transmission organizations that manage the interconnection queue positions the company holds across North America.
Who depends on this company?
Florida's residential and commercial customers rely on FPL's storm-hardened grid to avoid blackouts during hurricane season — without it, rolling outages would be routine. Electricity markets in Texas and the Midwest depend on NextEra's wind farms to meet renewable energy certificate requirements. Corporate buyers including Amazon and Google rely on NextEra's solar and wind development pipeline to fulfill their own public renewable energy commitments.
How does this company scale?
The expertise needed to assess a site, get permits, and build a wind or solar farm can be applied in new locations without starting over — those processes are standardized and travel well. What does not travel easily is access to the best sites: the highest-quality wind and solar locations with existing transmission connections are already claimed or face years-long interconnection queues, so finding the next great site gets harder as the company grows.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
Federal production tax credits and investment tax credits make renewable projects cheaper to build — if Congress phases those down, individual projects become less profitable and harder to finance. More intense Atlantic hurricanes force FPL to spend more on hardening its grid, raising costs before the commission approves any recovery. Across all generation and transmission assets, NERC reliability standards require ongoing cybersecurity and physical security upgrades that add to operating costs whether or not they generate any return.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
A strong Atlantic hurricane could destroy large parts of FPL's grid and, at the same time, prompt the Florida Public Service Commission to block or limit the rate increases FPL would normally use to recover those repair costs. That combination would cut off the regulated cash flow that funds NextEra Energy Resources' renewable development pipeline at exactly the moment when repair bills are largest, leaving the company short of internal capital precisely when it needs the most.
Supply Chain
Electricity Grid Supply Chain
The electricity grid is shaped by three structural constraints that no other supply chain faces simultaneously: electricity cannot be stored at scale and must be consumed the instant it is generated, power degrades over distance with capacity set by the weakest link in the transmission path, and grid topology was built over a century and cannot be quickly reconfigured.
Nuclear Energy Supply Chain
The nuclear energy supply chain is shaped by three structural constraints that most industries never encounter: regulatory and licensing timelines that stretch beyond a decade before a reactor generates a single watt, a fuel cycle where each step — mining, conversion, enrichment, fabrication — is restricted by both physics and international treaty, and a decommissioning obligation embedded from the moment a plant is approved, binding operators to costs that extend decades beyond the last kilowatt-hour sold.