The company is making investments in renewables and grids that will reach $21.5 billion by 2025, including the construction of Vineyard Wind 1 and the integration of PNM Resources.
Regulatory stability and the commitment of the different administrations to decarbonisation have helped Iberdrola, Europe’s leading electricity company and one of the four largest in the world by market capitalisation, to strengthen its commitment to the United States, the main destination of the group’s investments, with more than $21,500 million planned for the three-year period 2023-2025. The number of employees of the Group’s US subsidiary, AVANGRID, exceeds 7,500 and the company generates a total of 70,000 jobs in the country through its investments and purchases.
The combination of the grid business and renewable energy generation is one of the main differentiators of the company, positioned to fully capitalise on all the benefits derived from the energy transition. In the last three years (2020-2022), the company chaired by Ignacio Galán has invested $9 billion in the United States, and in 2021 alone it exceeded $3 billion.
In the transmission and distribution grid business, the company is investing in modernisation and digitalisation to increase service quality and resilience to extreme weather events and to enable the integration of more clean energy into the system. It is also the third largest renewable energy company in the country in terms of installed capacity and leads the development of offshore wind energy, a key vector of the energy transition, with a project portfolio of more than 6,000 MW. Iberdrola’s installed renewable capacity in the United States is expected to reach approximately 10,000 MW by 2025, with 70% growth in a decade.
It currently has two of the country’s most important renewable energy and grid initiatives underway: the construction of the 806 MW Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind farm in Massachusetts waters, and the acquisition of PNM Resources in New Mexico and Texas.
In early 2022, through its North American subsidiary AVANGRID, Iberdrola was awarded more than 2,000 MW of offshore wind capacity on the East Coast: the Park City Wind (804 MW) and Commonwealth Wind (1,232 MW) offshore wind farms which have ongoing Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) permits.
Total investment in these three projects could exceed $10 billion over the current decade, and would generate clean energy for more than 1.5 million households.
AVANGRID also has the Kitty Hawk project (3,500 MW) in North Carolina waters, the first phase of which, Kitty Hawk North (800 MW) has already started the BOEM permitting process.
In line with the US government’s commitment to green hydrogen, in October 2022, Iberdrola and the US company Sempra Infrastructure announced an agreement for the joint development of large-scale green hydrogen and ammonia projects to meet the decarbonisation needs of US industry.
US energy leader
In less than two decades, Iberdrola has become one of the largest groups in the North American electricity sector, listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 2015.
Headquartered in Orange, Connecticut, and with approximately $40 billion in assets, the firm has a presence in 24 states and manages more than 9,450 MW of installed capacity, including more than 8,600 MW of renewables (primarily wind and solar PV), and more than 130,000 kilometres of power lines through eight distributors in New York, Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts. The company serves a population of 10 million people in the United States.
On 13 September 2022, Iberdrola and AVANGRID were invited to the event at the White House for the approval of the Inflation Reduction Act, a historic law supporting renewable energy and the fight against climate change in the United States.
Iberdrola has a portfolio of more than 25,000 MW of high-quality renewable projects in the United States, representing a stable platform for continued growth over the coming years as the country meets its decarbonisation targets.
AVANGRID continues to make significant progress in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) areas. In January this year, AVANGRID was again recognised for the third consecutive year by JUST Capital for its commitment to the environment and the communities it serves, being the first utility in the ranking, and the Ethisphere Institute included it among the world’s most ethical companies for the fourth consecutive year.
Thanks to the company’s commitment to renewable energy, AVANGRID’s CO? emissions intensity is 6.5 times lower than the average for US utilities.
