Bidders circle as EDF’s renewable assets in the US go on sale
KKR, Clearway Energy and LS Power among groups interested in acquiring French group’s American clean energy business
KKR, Clearway Energy Group and LS Power are circling EDF’s North American renewable energy business as the state-owned French power group sells assets to cut debt and ready a rollout of new nuclear plants.
The private equity firm, clean power developer and independent energy producer are among up to five suitors after a first round of nonbinding bids for the assets worth roughly €4bn, according to people familiar with the matter.
The sale of EDF Power Solutions is the most advanced part of a drive by the French group to raise funds and sell off assets under chief executive Bernard Fontana, who was appointed in May last year to steer the sprawling nuclear operator and energy distributor through an ambitious phase of new reactor constructions in Europe.
KKR has been a big investor in renewable energy in recent years, taking stakes in portfolios of solar farms or backing offshore wind projects from South Korea to the UK.
Clearway, jointly owned by France’s TotalEnergies and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, has a portfolio of clean energy and gas assets across the US, while LS Power is focused on electricity generation, transmission and infrastructure.
The sale of the EDF division, which has roughly 26 gigawatts of developed projects in wind, solar and energy storage across the US, Canada and Mexico, comes amid a race to secure power sources in the US to fuel data centres.
Fontana has outlined €1bn a year in cost savings to 2030 and is considering further disposals to cut the group’s debt, which stood at €51.5bn debt at the end 2025.
That was €2.8bn lower than a year earlier but EDF’s net debt ratio was almost three times operating profits last year, compared with 1.5 times a year earlier, after a fall in earnings.
EDF has estimated it needs to spend €25bn a year on the maintenance of its existing nuclear reactors — its French fleet of 57 is Europe’s largest — and preparing the way for at least six new ones in France.
Those will cost about €73bn, in 2020 prices, and will be largely financed by a state loan. But EDF still needs to hire thousands of people and stump up preparatory costs.
Fontana has also confirmed plans to try to open up the capital of EDF’s Italian business Edison, through a listing or by bringing in an investor.
A plan to sell Dalkia, an EDF unit focused on energy efficiency services and alternative sources of power such as biomass, is on the backburner, according to several people familiar with the French group’s plans.
The division could be worth €3bn-€4bn but its sale has been complicated because the French government is not keen for EDF to start selling off assets at home ahead of a presidential election in 2027, one of the people added.
EDF, LS Power, KKR and Clearway all declined to comment.