On the desk today · Brookfield Renewable Partners
The dam was built a century ago. The construction cost was paid off decades ago. The water still flows. So does the cash.
| NYSE · BEP |
ACTION REQUESTED BY SEPT 25TH
Consider this your notice.
Here's what's happening.
I believe 1,806,000 Americans are going to be millionaires in the coming years from this.
Almost nobody knows about this yet.
Elon buried his next move in a government filing and said nothing.
I found it and I believe it's his biggest play yet, and I'll show you the whole thing…
Why he's hiding it, and what to do before the 25th.
It’s completely FREE to watch. No purchase. No credit card.
The clock's already running, [Fname]. Don't let it run out.
The Power Plant That
Paid for Itself a Century Ago
In the 1890s — before the Wright Brothers flew, before Henry Ford built the Model T — a Canadian company installed the first electric lights and tramways in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. It built hydroelectric dams along Brazilian rivers to power the growing cities. The company's name changed many times over the next century. The dams did not. They just kept generating.
One hundred and thirty years later, that company's descendant — Brookfield Renewable Partners — operates 47 gigawatts of renewable power capacity across five continents. And the hydroelectric dams at the core of the portfolio are among the longest-lived cash-generating assets on earth.
I was driving through upstate New York last fall and crossed a river with a small concrete dam beside the road. It looked old — built in the 1930s, maybe earlier. Water spilled over the top. A turbine house sat below it, humming. Nobody was there. No workers. No machinery moving. Just water falling, a turbine spinning, and electrons flowing into the grid. That dam has been doing the same thing for almost a century. The concrete is paid for. The turbine is paid for. The land is paid for. The only input is the water — and the water is free.
That is the economics of hydroelectric power — and it is the foundation of Brookfield Renewable.
Most people think of renewable energy as solar panels and wind turbines — new technologies that require subsidies and face intermittency challenges. Hydroelectric power is different. It is the oldest form of renewable energy. It runs 24 hours a day, rain or shine, wind or calm. It provides baseload power — the steady, reliable electricity that keeps the grid stable. And once a dam is built and paid for, the operating cost drops to nearly nothing. The fuel — water flowing downhill under the force of gravity — arrives on its own.
Brookfield Renewable began as the Great Lakes Hydro Income Fund, which went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1999 with three hydroelectric facilities in Western Quebec totaling 238 megawatts. It is approximately 45% owned by Brookfield Asset Management — a Canadian alternative asset manager with over $850 billion in assets under management and more than 100 years of experience in infrastructure. Under that relationship, the partnership has grown from 238 megawatts to 47,203 megawatts — a 200-fold expansion in 27 years. The portfolio now spans hydroelectric, wind, solar, distributed energy, pumped storage, and nuclear power across the Americas, Europe, India, and China.
In fiscal 2025, Brookfield Renewable reported $6.4 billion in revenue. Funds from operations reached $1.33 billion, or $2.01 per unit — up 10% per unit from the year before. The hydroelectric segment alone generated $607 million in FFO, up 19%. The company announced a 5% distribution increase — continuing a streak of annual raises that has lasted more than a decade. And it signed a first-of-its-kind Hydro Framework Agreement with Google to deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity — the kind of deal that signals where the largest technology companies are looking for power.
|
This Options Secret Changes Everything
Did you get your free copy of my foolproof "Safe Trade" Options Formula book yet?
It's the one that you can use to dramatically increase your odds of success trading options...
As you'll see when you get it, this formula works every time you use it...
Even if you don't have time right now to get into it, I urge you to get a copy now (before I start charging for it).
p.s. Hurry and get your copy of this 5-part "safe trade" formula while it's still free.
That 10% FFO-per-unit growth is the number that turns a utility into a compounder. Most power companies grow at the rate of the population — 1% or 2% a year. Brookfield Renewable has delivered 10% or more per-unit FFO growth annually for multiple consecutive years, driven by a combination of organic price escalators in existing contracts, new development, and accretive acquisitions funded by recycling capital from mature assets. The distribution — $1.49 per unit in 2025 — has grown at roughly 5% per year for more than a decade. You don't see 5% annual raises from your electric company. You see them from a compounder that happens to own power plants.
The stickiness is contractual and physical. Most of Brookfield Renewable's electricity is sold under long-term power purchase agreements — contracts that lock in a price for 10, 15, or 20 years. The buyer — often a government utility, a large corporation, or now a technology company like Google — agrees to purchase the power at a fixed or inflation-linked price for the duration of the contract. The revenue is visible years in advance. The dam keeps generating. The contract keeps paying.
Connor Teskey, CEO of Brookfield Renewable, said it plainly in the fiscal 2025 annual results: "2025 was a very strong year for our business as we delivered record results and extended our leadership position as the partner of choice to both governments and corporates seeking scale, clean and reliable energy solutions."
The flywheel runs on the convergence of two forces: the global push to decarbonize electricity and the explosive growth in power demand from AI and data centers. Every AI model trained requires massive amounts of electricity. Every data center built needs a reliable power source. Wind and solar are intermittent — they work when the wind blows and the sun shines. Hydroelectric runs around the clock. Nuclear runs around the clock. Brookfield Renewable owns both — including Westinghouse, the nuclear technology company, which in 2025 partnered with the U.S. Government to build new nuclear reactors. The world needs more power. It needs clean power. And it needs power that doesn't stop at sunset. Brookfield Renewable is building the answer — on rivers and reactors that generate whether or not anyone is watching.
WHY THIS WORKS
Hydroelectric dams are the longest-lived power assets on earth. Built once, paid for once, generating for a century or more. The fuel is gravity and water. The operating cost after depreciation is nearly zero.
Long-term contracts lock in revenue for decades. Power purchase agreements with utilities, governments, and corporations run 10 to 20 years with inflation-linked escalators. Revenue is visible years in advance.
10% FFO per unit growth — compounding, not just yielding. Unlike most utilities, Brookfield Renewable grows through development, acquisition, and capital recycling. The distribution has increased 5% annually for more than a decade.
AI and decarbonization are structural tailwinds. Google signed for 3,000 MW of hydro. Data centers need 24/7 power that wind and solar can't guarantee. Hydroelectric and nuclear — both in Brookfield's portfolio — provide it.
Brookfield Asset Management installed the first electric lights in São Paulo in the 1890s. It built the dams that powered two of the largest cities in Latin America before the 20th century began. One hundred and thirty years later, its renewable power platform spans 47 gigawatts across five continents — hydro, wind, solar, storage, and nuclear. The dams that started it all are still generating. The water that turns the turbines costs nothing. And the distribution that arrives every quarter — raised 5% every year for more than a decade — flows from the same force that powered those first electric lights in Brazil: water falling downhill, spinning a turbine, producing cash that never stops.
