Brookfield, one of the world’s largest owners of renewable power, is hunting for bargains in the solar and wind sector, in a bet that investor panic over Donald Trump’s anti-green agenda has been overdone.
Brookfield’s president Connor Teskey said the group, which manages $126bn in renewable energy and lower-carbon investments, was actively looking for big listed sustainable energy producers to buy.
His comments are a vote of confidence in a sector that has been hit by Trump’s sweeping cuts to green energy initiatives, as the new president moves to dismantle Joe Biden’s climate and industrial legacy.
“The [difference] between public market valuations and private market valuations in this space is very large right now [meaning] we expect there will be investment opportunities [among listed companies],” said Teskey in an interview with the Financial Times.
“With the current position of the public markets we’re certainly monitoring a few things,” he added.
Brookfield plans to keep investing in renewable energy even as Trump has moved to slash support for the sector in favour of bolstering oil and gas production. Teskey said soaring electricity demand in the US from power-hungry data centres meant that sustainable energy sources would continue to be in demand.
“The scale of the demand growth requires companies to use any and all types of power generation solutions. Renewables are going to benefit from that and will play a leading role because of their low-cost position,” he added.
Shares in listed renewable energy companies such as First Solar, XPLR Infrastructure and Vestas Wind Systems have fallen sharply since Trump’s election in November, as traders forecast a bleak outlook for such companies in the US.
In his first week in office, Trump ordered a moratorium on offshore wind approvals and paused hundreds of billions of dollars of incentives for green energy.
However, Teskey said Trump’s “focus on growth, industrialisation, and American excellence” was creating a growing demand for electricity in the US”, adding that large technology companies were in fact “looking to acquire more clean power than ever before”.
Last year, Brookfield acquired a majority stake in French renewable power producer Neoen and acquired four large UK wind farms from struggling Danish developer Ørsted.
Its renewable business also struck a deal with Microsoft to develop 10.5 gigawatts of green energy capacity for the technology group’s data centres, potentially costing more than $10bn.
In financial results released on Wednesday, Brookfield’s earnings were buoyed by strong fundraising in its renewable power and credit-oriented investment business.
In the fourth quarter, Brookfield raised a record $29bn in new investor cash, including $3.5bn for its second fund targeting so-called “energy transition”. The fund, which will close by mid-year, is already larger than a predecessor $15bn pool of cash Brookfield raised in 2022.
Brookfield added $137bn in new investor cash during 2024, a figure that was bolstered by some large acquisitions.
The new cash to invest caused Brookfield’s fourth-quarter fee-related earnings to reach a record $688mn, a 17 per cent increase from this time last year, slightly surpassing analyst forecasts.
Earlier this month, Brookfield changed its headquarters from Toronto to New York in a bid to increase its shareholder base and eventually gain inclusion in the S&P 500 index.