Iberdrola Sells Assets, ENGIE Completes Financing, Aquila and Octopus Potential Merger

Iberdrola sells of part of its Mexican business and plans to reinvest in renewables. ENGIE North America completes tax equity financing to fund U.S. solar and wind projects. Aquila and Octopus are in talks regarding a potential merger. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at intelstor.com. Iberdrola closed the sale of 55 percent of its Mexican business for around 6. 2 billion to a trust led by Mexico infrastructure partners. The deal includes 13 power plants with 8. 5 gigawatt capacity that are mostly gas plants contracted to Mexico CFE utility. Iberdrola retains 15 plants in Mexico and its Renewable Energy Project pipeline to keep growing wind and solar assets there. Joel, Iberdrola is banking it right now. What's happening? Joel Saxum: I think that there's a lot of development that is going to be going on in Mexico here to watch in the future as well. The president is going to be swapped over here pretty soon. This is the things that I've been watching and hearing and listening. The new president is actually very fond of renewable energy. However, it is a, you're, you got to keep Pemex happy. You got to keep everybody happy. The oil and gas business in Mexico is very big, but there is going to be more investment there. So interesting that Iberdrola is selling those assets. I don't know if their plans are to reinvest all of that capital back in Mexico. But they are keeping their pipeline going. So I would expect to see some of that happen as well. Philip Totaro: Iberdrola has been not only banking in Mexico, but they've also been raising a lot of cash and capital in other markets. They've been heavily looking into some of the emerging markets for offshore investments. Obviously Mexico's offshore market is non existent at this point and probably isn't gonna isn't going to turn into one. However, yeah, I the Mexican market, Joel, you're right, it's been particularly bad, actually, under the current president, and everybody's just counting down the days until I, there have been study after study that's been recently released about, like, how. Renewables has been completely trashed in that market. But I think Iberdrola's move is a good one, and I think them holding onto that cash to potentially redeploy in project development in Mexico will be a good idea. Mexico's a bit of a tough market because there's, some folks in, in certain areas that don't really they didn't get a good feeling from some of the project developers that were there previously. But it is a market that does need to decarbonize quite a bit. And, is obviously going to be able to get in there and do a lot with the pipeline that they have. Allen Hall: Iberdrola reported a 10 percent increase in 2023 net profits to 4. 8 billion euros. They set a new investment record in 23 also of 11. 4 billion euros with grid and offshore wind as the main drivers. Over 5 billion euros was invested in renewables like offshore wind farms, now operating in France and the United States ROA plans a 2024 investment record of 12 billion euros,...