In the winter of 2015, three directors of a Connecticut electric company met with a potential acquirer: a determined Spanish utility executive named José Ignacio Sánchez Galán, who surprised them with a bold vision for America’s utility industry. And it looks well positioned to take advantage of what is likely to be a clean energy boom in the coming years as both the Biden administration in the United States and European countries tighten regulations and provide incentives to encourage investment in green energy. Iberdrola is now one of a handful of utilities — alongside Enel in Italy, Orsted in Denmark and Nextera Energy in the United States — that many analysts see as leaders of a new generation of “renewable majors,” comparable to the way oil majors like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell exercised huge influence on how the world used energy. Mr. Galán is now planning to roughly double Iberdrola’s capacity for generating clean energy over the next five years, by investing €35 billion more not only in wind and solar power, but also in emerging sectors like hydrogen, which the company says could be ready to take off as wind power was 20 years ago.
