Comment by direwolf20
6 hours ago
What happens if the operating company can't pay the debt? The bank repossesses the facility. Now what does the bank do with a solar facility? Does it (A) let it rot, losing massive value, (B) run a bulldozer through it, destroying massive value or (C) find a way to operate it, receiving profit from doing so?
The bond covenants usually tie it to revenue and external factors. With a solar facility, it's pretty cut and dry -- the if the operator fucks up, they default, the bondholders take a haircut and someone buy the asset at auction.
With a nuclear facility, the capital costs are ridiculously high and the facilities are too big to fail and too impactful to close. So the ratepayers and taxpayers get stuck with it. In New York, the state is providing $33B in subsidies to keep 4 nuclear plants that are hemorrhaging money online.
That's why my opinion is that they should just be public assets. Let the state or federal government make some revenue instead of sending billions of mid-cycle capital to Constellation energy.