Askume, Sept 17 – U.S. utility AES Corp (AES.N) said on Tuesday it would sell a 30% indirect stake in its Ohio subsidiary to Canada’s second-largest pension fund CDPQ for $546 million. The funds will be used to support infrastructure investments.
AES Ohio said it will invest more than $1.5 billion from 2024 to 2027 to improve reliability by upgrading transmission infrastructure and modernizing the power grid.
Utilities are expected to benefit from a surge in power demand driven by artificial intelligence and data centers , prompting companies and investors to strike deals with them.
AES said: “(The deal with CDPQ) will support AES Ohio’s $1.5 billion investment plan to strengthen our systems and support growing data center demands, which have the potential to increase our peak load by more than 50% by the end of the decade.
The sale, expected to close in the first half of 2025, expands AES’s existing partnership with CDPQ’s Indiana subsidiary.
The Virginia-based company has a long-term asset sales goal of $3.5 billion by 2027.
Earlier this year, AES sold its Brazilian operations to power company Oren, with the US company expected to fetch $640 million.
