What Exelon’s Wind Energy Buy Means For the Future of Nuclear Power
Exelon (EXC) announced this week it was buying John Deere Renewables for as much as $900 million, a purchase that marks the company’s entrance into the wind generation business and suggests its lack of confidence in a nuclear energy renaissance. As the largest U.S. utility owner and the country’s biggest nuclear generator, Exelon’s actions often foreshadow where the energy industry is headed.
It wasn’t so long ago that President Obama gave nuclear power a huge boost by endorsing the energy source in his State of the Union speech. A month later, the Energy Department announced $8.3 billion in government-loan guarantees to help Southern Co. (SO) to build a new nuclear power plant — the first in more than 30 years — in Georgia.
But in the months since, the momentum for the much-touted nuclear renaissance has...
