00:00I want to get ourselves situated because you serve customers across eight states from Texas
00:05to North Dakota, and we were talking a lot today about how a lot of these states are seeing a
00:09huge
00:10surge in electricity demand tied to the AI build-out. How prepared are our grids to handle
00:16this giant influx when it comes to this? Yeah, well, thanks for having me. What a terrific
00:20question and something we talk about every single day at Xcel Energy. You're right, we have a large
00:25footprint across eight states, and data centers are driving electricity demand both this decade,
00:30and we even see more growth into next decade with our large data center customers. Big piece of our
00:36growth, you mentioned Texas and New Mexico. We serve also oil and gas customers in the Permian and
00:42Delaware basins, some of the largest, most prolific oil and gas customers in the country, and we're
00:47building infrastructure for them too, transmission, generation, distribution. So artificial intelligence
00:53is an incredible asset for the country, and data centers are critical infrastructure,
00:57but they're not the only things that are causing electric growth across our territories.
01:01I want to talk about, though, one of these deals, because you signed a relatively massive deal with
01:06Google for a project in Minnesota, and I was pretty struck by this stat. Electric bills for Xcel Energy
01:11customers over the past five years were 29 percent below the national average, but as more hyperscalers
01:18get on the grid. Can you keep that success rate up? We're proud of our affordability progress with
01:25our customers. We do serve six of the lowest 10 cost utilities in the country, so I'm really proud of
01:31that fact. Actually, data centers and data center development help keep bills affordable for our
01:36customers. If you think about the Pine Island transaction we did with Google, this is about a 750 megawatt
01:43data center where Google is going to pay for all of their infrastructure costs. They're going to pay
01:48for the full rate of their transmission usage, not a discount rate or an economic development rate as
01:54we used to call them, but the full rate, and they're going to build all the new generation. We're going
01:58to build it, own it, and operate it on behalf of them, but they're going to pay for all the
02:01new generation
02:02that's going to serve their customers. And because of where we serve, we have an interesting and unique
02:06footprint at Xcel Energy. We can do it with wind, solar, large-scale batteries, and they're going to pay for
02:12all that protect our existing customers. And in fact, because they're paying full transmission rates,
02:17we're going to see that over a 10 to 15 year period, we're actually going to save our customers
02:23one to one and a half billion dollars over a 15 year period. That translates to one to two percent
02:28lower transmission costs for all of our residential customers. That's that way to help lower bills
02:34over time as opposed to raise them due to data center infrastructure. I wanted to pull out some more
02:38specific stats because Xcel has raised its five-year capital plan by 33% to $60 billion.
02:45At what point does that rate of spending, though, become a concern for existing rate payers? Is that
02:51going to get passed through? It's a great question. Look, we're building a more modern, more resilient,
02:56more sustainable grid of the future, and that comes with investment. So it is sustainable. We've,
03:01over the last decade, we've been able to keep our bills well below the rate of inflation for our
03:05customers. And we expect over the next decade, we can keep it at or just above inflation and make
03:11sure that our customers have a more modern, more resilient, more sustainable grid for their everyday
03:17usage, as well as energizing new industries like the oil and gas industry in the Permian Basin,
03:22like data centers across all eight of our states. I believe you're committed to closing coal plants
03:27by 2030, right? But given that we were talking about the need for more energy, is that timeline
03:33still realistic? So yesterday, we filed our 21st sustainability report. I'm proud to say that
03:39Xcel Energy has lowered our carbon footprint since 2005 by 58%. And we're on a trajectory to be carbon
03:46free by the middle of the century. Sustainable? Yes. We've actually planned these commitments for over a
03:52decade. And we've built the infrastructure or in the process of building the infrastructure to make
03:57sure that we can meet the commitment to serve our customers reliably and affordably in the absence
04:03of coal. But we'll come back with wind, solar, storage, and natural gas as backup generation to make sure
04:09that we have a resilient and reliable grid for our customers. I wanted to ask you about natural gas
04:14because we're seeing geopolitical tensions, what's happening in the Middle East, renew this conversation
04:19about energy security. Has that changed how you're thinking about natural gas, particularly as you're
04:24trying to make this bridge away from coal power? You know, what's interesting about our conflict
04:28with the Russian conflict with Ukraine or the Iranian conflict with the United States is we've seen very
04:35little price movement in natural gas during the duration of those events. That means that we have
04:41an enormous natural gas resource here in the United States that when we need to, we can tap into it
04:47harder and faster. So we've been able to have energy security and resiliency here in the United States
04:52despite having global geopolitical conflicts. And we've had price stability, at least on the natural
04:57gas side. And so that makes me confident that when we need the gas, we'll have access to it. And
05:02when
05:02we have access to a domain reasonably affordable for our customers. Let's also talk about the broader
05:08alternative energy space, renewable energy. I'm wondering what you've made of the Trump
05:12administration's approach when it comes to sometimes delaying or canceling permits related
05:17to these projects. Has that changed anything in the way that you're doing business?
05:21We've been building wind farms. We serve states that basically straddle the Great Plains from
05:27Minnesota and the Dakotas to Colorado and Texas and New Mexico. One of the greatest wind resources,
05:32not just in the country, but in the world to build wind farms. So we've been a leader in wind
05:36energy for 25
05:37years. I think that's going to go unabated for us because we can, with the same amount of capital,
05:43deliver a lower cost energy product to our customers using wind. So our projects that are
05:49under construction remain under construction. Our projects that are in development are still in
05:53development. We're working through the permitting challenges and we feel like we're going to be
05:57successful with wind now, wind into the future. And increasingly, we're doing a lot of solar,
06:02particularly in our southwestern business. You can imagine Texas, New Mexico, southern parts of
06:06Colorado are incredible solar resources. And then lastly, I'd say, you know, batteries have been
06:12an incredible asset for both the country and for Xcel Energy. We're going to build the largest long
06:18duration energy storage project as part of this Google deal you mentioned in Minnesota with Form
06:23Energy. I'm really excited about commercializing new technologies to make sure that we can remain on
06:28a sustainability journey that we've been on for half a century. In the final minute that I have you,
06:33I did want to ask you about something that's come up here today, which is this potential NextEra
06:38Dominion merger. I'm just wondering your thoughts on it, if that's making you think about your
06:42positioning any differently. Well, look, we've had an enormous partnership with NextEra over 25 years.
06:49They've been a partner in helping us build and own and operate wind and solar resources. We've
06:54actually announced a joint development agreement with NextEra to continue to build wind and solar battery
06:59resources to serve data centers across our eight states. They called us as they were engaging in
07:05this transaction. They've committed to our joint development agreement not changing in its structure
07:10stature. And so I'm excited for them and their journey, but it's not going to affect our journey
07:14in our partnerships with NextEra.
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