Overview
Clearway Energy is one of the largest U.S. renewable energy companies by operating capacity, owning roughly 12.9 GW of power generation assets across 27 states. It is structured as a yieldco: a publicly traded entity that holds contracted power plants under long-term PPAs and passes the resulting cash flows to shareholders as dividends. The publicly traded entity, Clearway Energy, Inc., trades on the NYSE under two share classes, CWEN (Class C) and CWEN.A (Class A), and is led by President and CEO Craig Cornelius, who has held the role since 2024. The private sponsor, Clearway Energy Group (CEG), is owned equally by BlackRock (which acquired Global Infrastructure Partners in 2024) and TotalEnergies. CEG holds roughly 42% of the economic interest in Clearway Energy, Inc.
The company's origins trace to NRG Yield, which NRG Energy took public in July 2013 to hold its contracted generation assets. Global Infrastructure Partners acquired NRG Energy's interest in NRG Yield in August 2018 for approximately $1.375 billion and rebranded the company as Clearway Energy. TotalEnergies bought 50% of CEG from GIP in May 2022, establishing the current co-sponsor structure. The two sponsors use CEG as the development platform, building, acquiring, and maturing renewable projects, and then sell operating assets down into the public CWEN entity as cash-yielding investments.
How the yieldco structure works
The core financial metric Clearway reports is Cash Available for Distribution (CAFD): operating cash flow after debt service and maintenance capital, available to pay common dividends. Clearway targets predictable CAFD growth by acquiring new contracted assets from CEG (called "dropdowns"), repowering older wind and solar projects to extend their useful life and PPA contracts, and adding battery storage to existing project sites.
Revenue and EBITDA are meaningful but secondary metrics in this structure. CAFD is what drives dividend capacity. FY2025 CAFD of $430 million hit the top of the guidance range. The 2026 guidance of $470-510 million implies 9-19% growth. The company's 2030 CAFD per share target of $2.90-$3.10 implies multi-year compounding from the current run rate, supported by a dropdown pipeline of 11.2 GW of late-stage opportunities sitting at the CEG level.
Portfolio
Of Clearway's roughly 12.9 GW of gross capacity, approximately 10.1 GW is wind, solar, and battery storage under long-term contracts with utilities, corporations, and municipalities. The remaining 2.8 GW is conventional gas generation, peaking and combined-cycle units Clearway classifies as "flexible generation." These gas assets are contractually useful because they provide dispatchable capacity, but they are not part of Clearway's growth strategy and their PPA expirations are not being renewed with new long-term gas contracts.
Key recent additions to the portfolio include: Catalina (109 MW solar, Kern County, California, acquired July 2025, PPA with an investment-grade utility through 2038); Tuolumne Wind (137 MW, Klickitat County, Washington, acquired April 2025, 15-year PPA with Turlock Irrigation District through 2040); Luna Valley Energy Center (200 MW solar, Fresno County, California, came online October 2025); and the final 113.5 MW storage phase of the Daggett Energy Center in San Bernardino County, also online in October 2025.
Clearway has signed nearly 1.1 GW of PPAs with Google, making Google one of its largest corporate offtakers. The 650 MW Swan Solar project in Missouri and Goat Mountain wind repowering in Texas (targeted for 2027, backed by a 15-year hyperscaler PPA) are among the most visible data center-linked projects. In total, Clearway signed approximately 2 GW of contracts to supply data center customers in the 12 months through year-end 2025.
Growth strategy
Financials
Clearway reported $1.43 billion in FY2025 operating revenues, adjusted EBITDA of $1.22 billion, and CAFD of $430 million. The company posted a consolidated net loss of $231 million on a GAAP basis, primarily reflecting depreciation and amortization on its asset base and interest expense on $7.9 billion of long-term debt. Net income attributable to Clearway common stockholders was $169 million. Total liquidity was $1.06 billion at year-end.
In January 2026 the company raised $600 million in senior unsecured notes due 2034 at 5.75%, along with about $50 million in Class C equity, to fund acquisitions and project commitments. The quarterly dividend declared with first-quarter 2026 results is $0.4676 per share, or approximately $1.87 annualized. Clearway targets 5 to 8 percent annual dividend growth as CAFD increases through dropdowns and repowering.
The 2026 CAFD guidance of $470-510 million is supported by the expected contribution of projects coming online in 2025 and early 2026, repowerings, and completed dropdown acquisitions. In the first quarter of 2026, reported in May, revenue rose 19% to $354 million and adjusted EBITDA was $257 million, and Clearway reaffirmed its 2026 guidance, its 2027 CAFD per share target of $2.70 or better, and its longer-term 2030 CAFD per share target of $2.90-$3.10, which depend on executing the CEG dropdown pipeline and the data center PPA backlog. Over $22 billion has been raised to finance 350-plus distinct projects across the Clearway platform since inception.