Title

Presentation

Clearway Energy, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-1.35 EPS, expectations were $-0.45.

Operator: Thank you for standing by. My name is Janice, and I will be the operator assisting today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Clearway Energy, Inc. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a Q&A session. If you would like to withdraw your question, press 1 again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Akil Marsh. Please go ahead.

Akil Marsh: Thank you for taking the time to join the Clearway Energy, Inc. first quarter call. With me today are Craig Cornelius, the company’s President and CEO, and Sarah Rubenstein, the company’s CFO. In addition, we have other members of the management team in the room to answer your questions if needed. Before we begin, I would like to quickly note that today’s discussion will contain forward-looking statements, which are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. Actual results may differ materially. Please review the safe harbor in today’s presentation as well as the risk factors in our SEC filings. In addition, we will refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. For information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today’s presentation.

In particular, please note that we may refer to both offered and committed transactions in today’s oral presentation and also may discuss such transactions during the question-and-answer portion of today’s conference. Please refer to the safe harbor in today’s presentation for a description of categories of potential transactions, and related risks, contingencies, and uncertainties. With that, I will hand it off to Craig.

Craig Cornelius: Thanks, Steve. And good evening, everyone. I will begin on Slide 5 where we outline our business update. Clearway Energy, Inc. remains firmly on track to deliver best-in-class growth in the near and long term. We are reiterating our 2026 CAFD guidance and our 2027 CAFD per share target of $2.70 or better, which continues to be supported by execution across all our growth pathways. What has evolved meaningfully since our November update is the scale and visibility of growth investments we now see in the medium and long term. Based on work completed over the last several months, we now expect to deploy 20% more corporate cash between 2026 and 2029 relative to our prior outlook. This increase reflects successful commercialization and stronger execution across our enterprise.

Power demand tied to co-located digital infrastructure continues to represent a growth opportunity that we are advancing deliberately. Progress includes new equipment purchases, a design and delivery partnership with our friends at Quanta and Blattner, and ongoing engagement with hyperscaler customers across multiple complexes in our development program. While we remain disciplined in what we will move forward on and when, these developments increase our confidence that digital infrastructure will represent a sizable long-term growth opportunity that is additive to our existing robust outlook. In parallel, we have also strengthened our capital allocation framework during the quarter with the approval of the share class simplification proposal.

Taking these factors together, we are now increasing our focus towards delivering the top end or better of the 2030 CAFD per share target range of $2.9 to $3.1 per share that we set just six months ago, reflecting the potential growth investment visibility that we achieved in recent months. Additionally, the continued success heightens our confidence that we will be able to set a growth target in 2031 later this year that translates to the top end of our 5% to 8%+ long-term growth range in 2031. Turning to Slide 6. Fleet optimization remains one of our most capital-efficient growth pathways, and we continue to make meaningful progress on two fronts: revenue enhancements in our existing Texas wind fleet and our repowering program. Starting with our Texas fleet, during the quarter, a previously awarded PPA with a hyperscaler has now been executed, and we expect two additional awarded PPAs to be executed later this year.

These contracts extend contracted tenors across three operating assets and significantly enhance long-term revenue and cash flow visibility. Turning to repowerings. Our program continues to move forward on schedule. From a capital perspective, we continue to expect to deploy approximately $600 million of corporate capital across the repowering program at 11–12% CAFD yields, while extending asset lives and improving the quality and durability of cash flows well into the next decade. Overall, these fleet enhancements further solidify the pathway to potentially exceed our 2030 financial objectives. Turning to Slide 7. During the quarter, we seamlessly closed the Cardinal acquisition, formerly referred to as Dureva. We continue to expect a CAFD yield in excess of 12% on the transaction, and the acquired assets are performing in line with expectations.

Cardinal is highly complementary to Clearway Energy, Inc.’s existing fleet, along with presenting clear avenues for upside value creation. Looking ahead, we continue to evaluate additional M&A opportunities with discipline. At a high level, our core requirements include near-term accretion and long-term CAFD yields of approximately 10.5% or better, a strong strategic fit with upside value creation potential, and deal sizing that aligns with our broader capital allocation framework. Importantly, potential future M&A remains upside to our existing targets rather than a requirement to achieve them. Turning to Slide 8. For the 2026 and 2027 vintages, we are 100% commercialized on sponsor-enabled growth projects, with construction progressing as planned.

In the 2028 COD vintage, we have made substantial progress as well, with contracts signed or awarded for over 70% of the megawatts we plan to bring online, putting us well placed to achieve the top end or better of our 2030 target from investments planned for 2028. Turning to Slide 9. We are also confident in the strength of our 2029 COD vintage as a key driver of our long-term growth outlook. Our development pipeline for that vintage is sizable and diverse, underscoring both the scale of the opportunity and the depth of our execution capabilities. Within the 2029 pipeline, we have advanced priority projects that total over 4 GW and include an approximately 2 GW solar-plus-storage project in the late stages of development. Importantly, what our enterprise is developing in the 2029 COD has meaningfully more capacity than is required to meet our 2030 financial objectives.

This provides resiliency and optionality as we continue to progress commercialization, allowing us to be selective and disciplined while preserving upside. Turning to Slide 10. Since November, we have materially increased our line of sight to investment opportunities in the near term, with total corporate capital deployment over 2026 to 2029 now expected to be $3 billion. The green portion of the chart represents committed and identified investments, while the darker blue shade represents future late-stage growth opportunities that we expect to identify on future earnings calls as commercialization progresses. This increasing visibility provides us with conviction that we can achieve the top end or better of our 2030 target. The capital plan outlined on this slide excludes further upside from third-party M&A or co-located digital infrastructure investments that we may execute on from a position of strength.

Turning to Slide 11. We have confidence not just in meeting our 2030 target, but in achieving the top end or better given the visible and abundant growth outlook discussed earlier and illustrated in this walk. Starting from our reaffirmed 2027 target, the investments already committed and identified across the 2027 through 2029 COD vintages provide a clear path to meeting our 2030 target, with future growth investments enabling us to get to the top end or better of the target. This presented walk incorporates conservative assumptions around corporate financing and our base portfolio, consistent with our historical practice of under-promising and over-delivering in the way we set long-term objectives for the enterprise. In our flexible generation fleet, we assume long-term market price outcomes grounded in a conservative set of assumptions around California’s regulations and market design.

If long-term pricing of capacity and energy attributes from those facilities is consistent with historical equilibrium prices, that would lead to CAFD per share above the target range in 2030 and beyond. As always, future and uncommitted third-party acquisitions are not included in our long-term goals. And the emerging opportunity set for co-located digital infrastructure investments would also present upside opportunity relative to these goals. Taken together, this robust outlook allows us to now aim for the top end or better of the 2030 CAFD per share target range of $2.9 to $3.1 that we set just six months ago. Turning to Slide 12. During the quarter, we also made tangible progress across several fronts in our business program and digital infrastructure assets.

We are increasingly optimistic that our incumbency, our pre-existing development assets, and natural advantages as a developer-operator of mission-critical power assets will position Clearway Energy, Inc. to be a mainstay provider of power and powered land to satisfy our country’s needs in this domain. Our acceleration of work during the past quarter included progress across site development, commercialization, and delivery preparation that together sets the stage for construction of differentiated and large-scale co-located generation and powered land for data centers later in this decade. Completed equipment purchases for the first phase of generation at our complex in Wyoming are targeting first load served as soon as 2028. We established a design and delivery partnership with our longtime friends at Quanta and Blattner, who are now advancing our work across the three complexes in our pipeline.

We signed PPAs with a data center development entity and entered the queue for a priority interconnection position at our complex in MISO. And our preparation of our Montana complex is also now coming into view, with first generation targeted for 2030 or sooner, and 500 MW of PPAs now signed and awarded. Across all of the complexes we have in development, we are seeing active and constructive engagement from our country’s largest hyperscalers, who see in Clearway Energy, Inc. a partner they can trust to deliver powered land that they need at scale, and with a generation mix that addresses their goals. As a reminder, the co-located digital infrastructure opportunity represents incremental upside to our goals. Illustratively, one complex alone could provide Clearway Energy, Inc.

with a $1 billion or greater capital deployment opportunity weighted towards 2030 and beyond. As always, any upside investment would be aligned with our stringent underwriting criteria for near- and long-term value creation. Turning to Slide 13. Based on our strongly accelerating development activity in our historical core business, we see potential for at least $1 billion of corporate capital deployment in 2030, which in turn could allow for us to sustain the high end of 5% to 8%+ CAFD per share growth into 2031. Our sizable 4 GW of 2030-vintage projects under development across our enterprise are strategically positioned, qualified for tax credits, and represent volumes in excess of what is needed to achieve our financial objectives. On top of this, we have conviction that part of one or more of the co-located data center complexes will eventually be commercialized, providing an upside investment opportunity.

Taken together, the progress we are making across Clearway Energy, Inc.’s multiple redundant growth pathways reinforces our confidence in the results that Clearway Energy, Inc.’s best-in-class growth engine will deliver for years to come. With that, I will turn the call over to Sarah, who will walk through our financial summary.

Sarah Rubenstein: Thanks, Craig. Turning to Slide 15, I will cover our first quarter financial results and our reaffirmed outlook for 2026. For the first quarter, Clearway Energy, Inc. delivered adjusted EBITDA of $257 million and CAFD, or free cash flow, of $70 million. From an operating perspective, our solar and battery fleet had strong performance across the portfolio and delivered results in line with budgeted expectations. The same was true in our flexible generation segment, which delivered solid operational execution during the first quarter. In our wind fleet, resource was lower than budgeted expectations in certain regions due to lower wind resource and availability, the most meaningful impact coming from Alta. The first four months of the year have seen meteorological conditions that have led to below-average resource levels for the wind industry across the Western U.S. compared to historical norms.

Also evident in our first quarter results was the impact on availability from a turbine enhancement program that Vestas North America is executing at Alta 2, 3, 4, and 5. We initiated the program in 2025 in conjunction with establishing a performance-based contract mechanism, with a goal of returning those units to their historical availability levels of 95%+ in 2026. Moving to the full-year outlook, we are reaffirming our full-year 2026 CAFD guidance range of $470 million to $510 million, as we continue to believe we are well positioned to meet our 2026 financial objectives based on growth commitments tracking on schedule and expected operational performance for the remainder of the year. As per our usual practice, the guidance range reflects the potential distribution of outcomes tied to operating performance, energy pricing, and the timing of growth, in addition to assuming P50 resource for the remainder of the year.

As always, our P50 resource expectation within our guidance assumes normalized weather conditions consistent with long-term historical averages. Turning to Slide 16. As disclosed last week, our share class simplification proposal was approved at our annual meeting, reflecting investors’ clear preference for simplification and a more straightforward public structure. The simplification eliminates complexity by moving to one publicly traded security and positions us to broaden shareholder depth. Consistent with what is shown on the slide, we expect that one class of publicly traded shares will have higher average daily trading volumes, and the larger public float will make it a more attractive security for public investors. Lastly, the simplification allows for greater flexibility to support our capital funding strategy.

To meet our long-term CAFD per share and payout ratio goals, the efficient deployment of accretive capital is a key part of our strategy. Our core strategy to support the funding of growth for Clearway Energy, Inc. continues to include enhancing our position of strength over time by lowering our payout ratio to fund more growth with retained cash flows, while also utilizing corporate debt as a funding source. But as we have noted in past quarters, the issuance of equity only when accretive will also be a funding tool to ensure we prudently meet our financial objectives. While a core reason for implementing the simplification was to honor investor feedback and simplify our public structure, a larger public float with greater trading liquidity has the second-order impact of putting the platform in an improved position to utilize equity to fund attractive growth while ensuring it is issued without price disturbance.

Overall, we view this simplification as value enhancing for shareholders and supportive of our long-term financial objectives. With that, I will turn the call back over to Craig.

Craig Cornelius: Thanks, Sarah. To recap, we entered 2026 with a clear set of objectives, which I am pleased we are on track to achieve. We are on pace to deliver our 2027 CAFD per share target, and beyond 2027, we have increasing line of sight towards achieving the top end or better of our 2030 CAFD per share target. Equally important, we are building durability into that growth with our prudent funding strategy and long-term payout ratio objectives. Beyond 2030, our work is increasingly focused on extending the growth runway for our enterprise well into the next decade. Over the coming quarters, and specifically as part of our third quarter earnings update, we plan to advance initiatives that will enable us to roll forward our explicit CAFD per share growth target into 2031, targeting the high end of 5% to 8% annual growth from the midpoint of our 2030 target.

This includes continued advancement of our traditional development pipeline as well as thoughtful commercialization of gigawatt-scale energy complexes to serve data center demand, which will present upside to the goals that we set based on our planned investments in our historical core business. In summary, we believe Clearway Energy, Inc. is executing extremely well and is laying a foundation for durable long-term value creation. With that, operator, we are ready to take questions.

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Operator: We will now open the call for questions. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Justin Clare of ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Justin Clare: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking our questions here. I wanted to start on the digital infrastructure. Could you speak to the potential timing for the first investment in digital infrastructure? It looks like these projects are potentially moving a little bit faster than expected. The Wyoming data center could begin operating in 2028. Is there a possibility that Clearway Energy, Inc. could make an investment in that 2028 time frame, or what do you think is the most likely scenario?

Craig Cornelius: Yeah. The possibility does exist. I think we are in the fortunate position, Justin, of having a broadening array of opportunities that are being advanced by the Clearway Group sponsor entity. In historical core businesses, you saw where grid-tied projects that serve both utilities and corporate or hyperscaler customers are maturing in our pipeline and in a position to enable the amount of capital that Clearway Energy, Inc. would plan to deploy to hit the top end of its targets in the medium and long term. So these digital infrastructure campuses put us in the position to augment a core business pipeline that is already in great health relative to the goals that we set for the public entity. So what we will be doing over the course of the next few years is making a determination in any given vintage around what is optimal as a complementary additional fit for Clearway Energy, Inc., assessing its position in capital markets, and determining what is really going to be most value accretive for the shareholders of Clearway Energy, Inc.

in terms of investment tempo and fleet composition. But the acceleration of opportunity around those digital infrastructure campuses really just puts us in the fortunate position that we can think about accumulating a fleet of significant size, and the time that each individual asset may find its way into Clearway Energy, Inc. is ultimately going to be paced by what is most accretive to the public entity. So yes, it is possible that some of the first investments in generating technology that would go into those campuses could be available to Clearway Energy, Inc. as soon as 2028, and it will be alongside other investment opportunities in the core business.

Justin Clare: Got it. That is really helpful. And then just following up, how should we think about the relative attractiveness based on what you are seeing today in the digital infrastructure assets relative to traditional utility-scale investments? Would you anticipate CAFD yields to be similar, or are there meaningful differences? And are there any other factors you are considering in terms of relative attractiveness? One could be just the size of investments could be quite substantial, and there could be benefits there. Maybe help us understand that.

Craig Cornelius: I think it is still early for us to speak specifically to the individual structures that could be employed for deployment of capital by Clearway Energy, Inc. into infrastructure of this kind, and it will vary from one complex to another and from one customer to another. But the way that we are generally thinking about it is that we are looking to fashion projects which exhibit the same technical and commercial characteristics as those we routinely build for other grid-tied settings. When we present Clearway Energy, Inc. with an opportunity to deploy capital into those complexes, we aim to present it with an opportunity to deploy that capital with a similar risk profile, a similar tenor, a similar CAFD yield, and a similar long-term risk-adjusted return proposition.

There very well may be additional infrastructure that is developed and transferred either to a partner utility or to the hyperscaler technology company themselves as part of one of these sizable complexes. But we most certainly aim for the total scope of the complex to present ample opportunities for Clearway Energy, Inc. to deploy its capital with a risk profile and a return similar to what it sees from the grid-tied projects we prepare for it.

Operator: Your next question is coming from the line of Mark Jarvi of CIBC. Please go ahead.

Mark Jarvi: Craig, you mentioned the word tempo—investment tempo. Clearly, you are not short of investment opportunities and ability to deploy capital. When you think about the medium-term targets, and you are tracking at or above the 8% level through 2030, what holds you back from trying to push that above 8% and maybe closer to 10% on the upper end of the range? Is it funding that you just do not want to get ahead of yourself on, or is there anything else that would temper expectations for you right now?

Craig Cornelius: Thanks for asking the question, Mark. I think what has put our company in the great standing that it enjoys is that we put one foot in front of the other and make our growth happen through a progressive evolution in capital allocation framework and deployment of capital. When we think about the velocity of new investments and CAFD per share growth, we think first and foremost around the capital allocation framework we have set to maintain a prudent leverage ratio between 4.0 and 4.5 times, drive the payout ratio in the business down into the 70s as we approach the end of the decade, and to have the pace of growth matched with our public investors’ appetite for that growth. You are absolutely right that we want to be thoughtful about the pace that we present new investment opportunities for Clearway Energy, Inc.

so that the extent to which it accesses equity markets is entirely digestible. We are very proud of the way that we approached that work over the last year where there was no noticeable price disturbance for the amount of equity that we did issue through the ATM. We are also proud of how the simplification proposal that has now been adopted and effectuated should allow that kind of equity issuance through at-the-market instruments to happen in a way that, as Sarah noted, will not disturb share price. But there is still a very reasonable pace that we think makes sense from a crawl-walk-run perspective. So we do not intend to rush things. The opportunity set, as we build it out at the Clearway Group level, gives us the ability to really pace things based on a speed that feels most comfortable for our public investors.

In terms of the actual resulting CAFD per share levels, certainly other factors in the overall portfolio and the refinancing of our future debt maturities will also be factors that present themselves over time as we continue to extend contracts on our existing fleet and roll maturities. But again, I think our track record of planning that prudently and then beating those assumptions on the upside is well demonstrated. Our hope would be that each year we build a pace that we think is sensible, we match it to appetite from our public equity investors and bondholders for forming capital for new growth investments, and as our fleet continues to mature over time, we harden the base volume of CAFD and the CAFD per share contributions, and we continue to drive upwards to the top end or better of each new target range that we set.

So I think it is about making sure that we are deliberate in the pace that we approach both the bond and equity issuances that are needed to fund the growth of the business, but we feel quite good about continuing the track record we have, which made each new issuance well received.

Mark Jarvi: Makes sense. And just to follow up, it does feel like the market is receptive to the strategy and execution and the plan you put ahead. The ATM does not seem like a headwind now. As you look ahead to continue to accelerate the growth and expand on the growth, is there anything else beyond maybe going a little harder on the ATM that you are contemplating—selective asset sales, anything in the corporate structure like hybrid securities—or do you want to keep it very much a plain-vanilla capital structure at this point?

Craig Cornelius: When we look out through the plan to deliver up to the top end or better of our business plan just through our core business, the quantity of equity that would need to be issued in any given year is not a tremendously large number. It is digestible and consistent with what you see premium-growth utilities—who we aim to emulate—routinely issuing through instruments like that. So we do not right now see a need to undertake the use of some other structure for raising capital that is more exotic than that. As we contemplate larger upside opportunities that we have denoted here that would be most likely to materialize further out in the 2029–2030 and beyond time frame, we will be a bigger company. The size of our float will be larger.

The amount of retained CAFD in the business will be greater. The amount of leverage capacity in it will also be greater. Those things all work in a mutually reinforcing way that should hopefully allow us to continue to grow above scale without needing to look beyond the vanilla instruments we use today to fund that growth. But certainly, we will be thoughtful about what is available in the market at that time, and the way that we choose to fund growth will be informed by the same virtues of prudence in capital formation and risk avoidance in capital structure that have put us here.

Operator: Your next question is coming from the line of Hannah Velásquez of Jefferies, on for Julian Dumoulin-Smith. Please go ahead.

Hannah Velásquez: Hey, everyone. Thanks for the update, and congrats on the quarter. To kick off, I had a follow-up on the data center—or rather the large complex. I understand you are targeting a mix of resources across renewables and conventional. How do you think about “overbuilding” your renewables? I have read that if you were to provide solar to cover a data center need—because of the roughly 25% capacity factor—you would need a 4x overbuild on solar in that example. Is that the right way to think of it? And if so, does that imply that Clearway Group would perhaps bias more towards conventional?

Craig Cornelius: It is an interesting ratio that you are referencing. I do not think that is representative of the way that we have been designing these complexes, or the way that we have engaged with customers for the generation they provide. We are proud of the pragmatic perspective we have maintained—really since the inception of Clearway Energy, Inc. and its predecessor incarnation as NRG Yield—where we have seen that gas generation and renewables, and now storage, together can play a very complementary set of roles in a generation stack. The way that they get mixed together most definitely varies from one location to another based on whether you have a system that peaks in the winter or a system that peaks in the summer, or the relative resource attributes and net capacity factor of one technology or another.

That is what you see in the design of the different complexes that we are building, where you might see more or less solar nameplate capacity or more or less natural gas-fueled nameplate capacity in one location or another. We are not looking at an “overbuild” ratio like that. The way this works out is that we are identifying what the least-cost, best-fit technology is in a location, assessing local site constraints, determining how much generation that technology can provide during the 24 hours of the day in any 12-month period, and—after determining what is cost-effective and consistent with land-use expectations in that community and at the federal level—making sure there is an appropriately sized gas or battery generator at that location to assure that we can provide firm supply to the data center at that location or to the load-serving entity that is going to play a vital role in balancing the system.

I would not say that rule of thumb is something we see and, for example, in the case of the Montana complex, you would not see that kind of a ratio of solar generation to gas capacity.

Hannah Velásquez: Thank you. And as my follow-up, perhaps on the health of the tax equity capital markets. We have heard that a few of the larger institutional tax equity investors have paused in response to some of the FEOC ambiguity. Is that impacting your sponsor in any way? I know perhaps Clearway Group is good about a domestic-first strategy in terms of procurement, but anything to comment there—and perhaps even if the impact is overstated in the market?

Craig Cornelius: I am not in a position to address the broad market, but I can address our experience. I am proud to say I do not think we have been executing with tighter financing at size at any point in our history. For us, the markets for project debt, construction debt, tax equity, and tax credit transfer are the most robust we have ever seen them. We are organizing extremely efficient financing. The size of the projects that we are now organizing financing for—which are principally pointed to the 2028 vintage because everything pointed to 2027 is largely complete already in financing—are some of the biggest projects that we have ever financed. We just closed a $1 billion tax equity facility—that is the largest we have ever closed.

The banking community likes doing work with us because the projects we put together exhibit a strong risk-adjusted profile, and they trust us with their capital. Part of the reason we are on such good footing is that the safe harbor program we built for Clearway Group is really at the top of the industry in terms of organization, rigor, and planning. The projects we are completing now do not need to wrestle with the foreign entity of concern requirements that you are noting might have been difficult for some because of when they safe harbored those projects, but the equipment we purchased would comply anyway. The combination of our domestic-first supply chain, the planning we had for safe harboring, and the quality of Clearway Group as a sponsor has made this a very routine and robust period of time for us in financing projects.

The last thing I will note, because you asked about safe harbor, is that we are proud of how we have planned that program for our development pipeline well out into the 2030s. The same planning that put us in a position to be routinely financing projects right now for completion in 2027 and 2028 has put us in a position to look out well past 2030 with projects that will be eligible for tax credits and compliant with existing statute and guidance. All in all, our finance team is doing a tremendous job. They have already organized billions of dollars in financing this year, are committed, and have billions more to go. This is really the best financing environment we have ever seen.

Hannah Velásquez: Got it. Thank you, and congrats again.

Operator: I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question is coming from the line of Heidi Hauch of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Heidi Hauch: Hi. Good afternoon. Congrats on the update. I have another question on the digital infrastructure projects. We are hearing natural gas projects today can be more expensive and complicated to build, given EPC constraints and equipment constraints. How should we think about the return premium that Clearway Group would need to earn on these complexes relative to complexes that are renewables-only? Is it possible—or should we think—that some of that premium trickles down to a higher CAFD yield on those specific natural gas complexes?

Craig Cornelius: I think the word “complex” becomes the most important word for purposes of Clearway Energy, Inc.’s investment opportunity. Our goal is to have the novelty and scale of these facilities give the combination of Clearway Group and Clearway Energy, Inc. investment opportunities that produce great risk-adjusted returns, and we are focused as much on longevity and risk in structure as we are on the nominal return that a project can produce. We are thinking about both of those together. As far as the gas generator in most of these complexes goes, it remains quite possible that the owner of that gas generation would not be a Clearway company or affiliate, but instead a utility who is interconnecting the full basket of resources, or the technology company themselves.

Which entity owns the firming gas generation is a reflection of which entity is going to be in the best position to balance the co-located load and generation. We think of our role here as assembling a set of generator technologies that can allow someone to run, at a very high level of reliability, some very important digital computation infrastructure—not to own a gas plant per se. In all of these cases, some type of gas generation—either there at the site or delivered through the system—is vital to balancing it. There is certainly a value proposition for both Clearway Group and Clearway Energy, Inc. as a source of long-term capital in providing that kind of firming generation. Whether that is something that Clearway Energy, Inc. ultimately sees in the form of a very long-dated, low-risk return or a premium return is something that we will sort through in the future.

What we are focused on today is creating these projects so that we have the opportunity to have that kind of thoughtful engagement, and we are doing very well at that right now.

Heidi Hauch: Thank you. And on the updated corporate funding strategy, how would you think through funding as we go into 2030+? If you targeted the 1.7 GW of incremental growth to 2029 that is not currently in the $3 billion plan, we are seeing you upping your investment and, in tandem, accretive external equity. How should we think about funding the next leg of growth? Do you expect that, if you pursue incremental growth for 2029, you would have more retained cash flow or more debt capacity relative to equity? Why not increase the percentage coming from corporate debt or the nominal amount from corporate debt and retained cash flow as you increase your full investment target?

Craig Cornelius: I think I understand your question. I can address it from the standpoint of basic principles, and then Sarah, I will turn to you and you can share an example of how we think about incremental increases in corporate capital investment opportunity being capitalized as we grow. We are most definitely going to follow, as the corporate capital deployment opportunity set grows, the same algorithm that we have communicated for years. We look first to retained cash flow as a preferred first source of capital for investment and growth, and then second to the bond markets and debt capital within a prudently managed capital structure. We have talked about 4.0 to 4.5 times as the prudent leverage ratio that we look to as a business, and that is a range that has been in place going back for the entirety of our life as a public enterprise.

As we grow our fleet, both the amount of retained cash flow—especially into 2030 and beyond—will be growing, and our debt capacity, managed to that midpoint of that leverage ratio, for example, will be growing also. We will certainly plan to make use of those sources of funding first. Beyond that, there is a basic formulaic relationship between the dollars of new corporate capital that we could deploy and the fraction of those that would be funded from debt or equity. Sarah, I will turn to you to provide a basic rule of thumb.

Sarah Rubenstein: Sure. The amount of capital that we plan to deploy to meet our 2030 target has already assumed that we will use all available retained CAFD. Then we will fund the amount that we are able to through the issuance of corporate debt, which—within our leverage ratio—looks like about 45%. That means for the incremental investment above the baseline that we indicated we will need to get to our target range—which was that $2.5 billion of corporate capital we already talked about—once we get above that, we are able to issue corporate debt at about that 45%, but the balance of roughly 55% is going to have to come through the issuance of equity. Because we are talking about achieving above the high end of the range, we believe we will be able to do that from a position of strength without causing significant disruption to the price.

Craig Cornelius: That last point is the most important point, which is that we are in the fortunate position to have an opportunity set for Clearway Energy, Inc. that allows us to think about setting our sights above the long-term goals we articulated just six months ago. To the extent that we are thinking about, in a measured way—one quarter after another, one year after another—increasing the tempo or the scale of corporate capital deployment, we would be doing that because it is evident that the cost of that funding makes each new investment accretive, that our public investors welcome the proposition of our deploying that extra capital and issuing the securities that we need to issue to fund that. It is not a necessity.

We feel fortunate to be in the position we are in where that is a choice we can make rather than an obligation, and it is something that we can move through one step at a time. We will not surprise anyone with that because your question is oriented around a vintage that is three to four years from now, and we will all be able to get there together one step at a time.

Operator: There is no other question in queue. That concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Craig Cornelius for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Craig Cornelius: Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and for your ongoing support of Clearway Energy, Inc. We are proud of the work we are doing to deliver new generating capacity in markets across our country with an array of diverse energy resources that are critical to the country’s needs. Operator, you may close the call.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

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